Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

On the less heady aspect of education, a fundamental question arises as to the role of the teacher, which seems to me to have slipped away. Teachers are anxious to retain the integrity of the professional relationship with the child. Whoever is being taught, the relationship between the teacher and the pupil is the important one. Surely teachers would want to aspire to an equality of prospects for permanent employment and promotion within whatever mixed model emerges. This relates to an earlier question. If either of the two denominations were to hold out on the exemption they have achieved in the Equality Act an absurd situation would arise whereby the most highly qualified teachers, who may be specialists in teaching difference or difficulties associated with English as a foreign language, would not have the assurance of permanency, promotion or establishment. Their professional prospects would be heavily compromised and one would preside over inequality within what purports to be a system accommodating new difference.

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