Mr. Mickey Brady:

I thank the witnesses very much for the presentation. I congratulate the council on its Nobel nomination and I offer best wishes on that. I represent the Newry-Armagh constituency and I am very aware of Newry and Banbridge and the New-Bridge Integrated College from its inception, and I am well aware of the work it does. I believe that it does a great job. Initially, there was a feeling locally that the parents who sent their children to integrated schools were middle class and that it was an elitist thing. That is certainly not the case. Some of my children's friends have gone to New-Bridge college and one gets a very good insight into what that school is doing.

I have a couple of questions. Things have changed to some degree. I went to a convent primary school. There were girls there but we never saw them as there was a divider down the middle of the classroom. I then went to a single-sex primary school and then single-sex grammar school. The primary schools have changed and now it is mixed and so on. Where do the witnesses find the most opposition coming from? We would very much want to have all aspects of the Good Friday Agreement implemented. Surely the best way to promote reconciliation is integrated education. That is a no-brainer - excuse the pun.

It is good to see that Lagan College, which has a very good reputation, is an all-ability school. With entrance tests, do children have to go through the five tests? I ask this because I did the 11-plus test a long time ago. We were told that we were the last year to do that. As we were the last class and supposedly the last year, we had the same teacher - a Christian brother - for four years from the ages of seven to 11. There were 43 pupils in the class and 43 of us passed the 11-plus. Some passed through academic ability and quite a lot through fear and other things. There are quite a lot of good all-ability schools in my constituency, including St. Patrick’s High School, Keady and St. Paul's, and St. Joseph's in Crossmaglen. I was at a prize-giving recently and it is great to see the kids who are doing so well at every level. Integrated education is a step further, where that could be done. Coming from Newry, which has never really suffered the sectarian issues that other places in the North have experienced, one can see that reconciliation and integrated education have such an important part to play. I congratulate the council on the work it does. Unlike some of my colleagues here, I am very much aware of what New-Bridge Integrated College does.