Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The point made by Senator Coghlan is true. The House will recall that on the last day we met before Easter, we both raised the issue of coastal erosion in County Kerry and said that certain roads were falling into the sea. One week later, one half of a mile of road fell into the Atlantic Ocean, which had to be dealt with.

The issue of Dingle-Daingean Uí Chúis has gone beyond a joke. I would like the Minister to come to the House and discuss it with us. The reality is that the people of Dingle spoke democratically through a plebiscite which was properly organised and counted by the county council. They expressed their wishes. Every single Minister in the Cabinet to whom I have spoken about this agrees with the views of the people of Dingle, bar one. The legal advice I received on this matter is that the Minister should not have exercised that order until such time as the Local Government Act had been commenced by his colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

It is appalling and this is the reason people lose faith in democratic structures. People have done their best to articulate their view, like everyone else in the country, but are being ignored and are infuriated by it. The Minister should know that if somebody had decided to change the name of Dingle to Fungitown, it would have been exactly the same. It has nothing to do with Gaeilge agus Béarla. It is the fact of changing the name. Tá trí ainm ann — Dingle, Daingean Uí Chúis and An Daingean. We use and love all three names, so it is not a matter of choosing one.

An issue has been raised with me which touches on another issue, namely, school places in the Dublin area. I received a number of calls in recent times from people who are worried that the Catholic archdiocese is confining its selection of people to Catholics. I have some sympathy for the archdiocese in this regard, but this is not the constructive point I wish to make. The substantial point is that I was horrified to hear an aspirant to our Parliament express the view on "Morning Ireland" today that we should take the position that people would be selected for schools on the basis of their religion. The idea of lining up the innocent four and five year olds of Ireland and giving them access to education on the basis of their religion and the idea that only Catholics would get in is only a step a way from what we saw in Germany in 1940s and in Serbia in more recent times. It is appalling. I fully support the idea of Catholic parents having Catholic schools and these schools determining the balance of their enrolment on the basis of religion. I have no problem with that. That is not the point I am making. I question how a person who aspires to be a Member of Parliament can say we should do something, which for me is a perversion of the fundamental tenet of republicanism — of Catholic, Protestant and dissenter being together — and which makes a mockery of the aspirations of the signatories to the 1916 Rising who talked about cherishing all the children of the nation equally. Whatever way one looks at it, this is a total rejection of the founder of Christianity, who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me". This is appalling. I hope no party would ever go along with this.

We should discuss this issue and know our position on it. It is right that we should have the kind of schools people want. It is fine if they want Catholic, Church of Ireland, mixed, multi-denominational or non-denominational schools. People should have whatever they want, but the idea that the State would take a position to select people for education on the basis of their religion would be appalling. If such a future were to arrive, we may close down this Parliament. We may turn out the lights on Irish democracy and weep for the future of this country. If we were to go in that direction we would never turn back from it. We need to call a halt before it even begins so that our views would be clearly known on it.