Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Smith is there but I am not sure whether Senator McGreehan is still there. I will be as quick as I can. I thank the Chairman for putting this on the agenda for today. This is one of the most important things we discuss as a committee. I give a warm welcome to Mr. Osborne, Ms Merron and Mr. Collins. I thank them for the broad spectrum of work they are doing on this. The research and the polls they are doing are smart. I give credit to the political parties that supported their Bill in Stormont. It is an indictment on the parties that did not support it. You wonder what their real agenda is.

Rather than going down that road, I will get to the teeth of the report. It is stated in the report that there is a statutory duty on the Department of Education under the education order of 1989 to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education but there is still no Government strategy for growing the number of integrated schools. Given that so many political parties supported the IEF's Bill, what is the IEF doing to influence them to change this? This will take political will and drive and, given the very high figures the IEF has found in its polls for those in favour of integrated education, and if we are ever going to have a shared future on this island, this has to happen. I believe strongly that education shapes society and we need to question ourselves about segregation of any kind, whether in the line of sex or religion.

The future is integrated education across the board, not just in the context of Catholics and Protestants, but it is still important in a Northern Ireland context. Does the Integrated Education Fund have a parents representative group as part of its committee? If it does, what plans does it have to lobby the parties now that the North is coming into election season?