Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

One aspect of the proposed education cuts that may be going under the radar but is very serious in terms of national reconciliation and the Anglo-Irish Agreement and in terms of where we want to go as a country is the removal of the block and ancillary grants from Protestant schools. The issue is very serious in that many Protestant children are happy to be educated in co-education and community schools, which is fair enough, but it is the wish of a number of Protestant parents and their children that they are educated in schools with their own ethos, which is their right under the Constitution.

The Protestant schools used the block and ancillary grants to fund the education of Protestant children from the poorer income groups — in other words, the fees of these children were waived. This happened in the Royal School in Cavan, which celebrated its 400th anniversary recently, and other schools throughout the country. Such schools will not now be in a position to provide education for these poorer children, who wish to go to such schools and maintain their ethos.

I ask the Leader to consider this issue and discuss it specifically with the Minister for Education and Science. I know the Leader is a wise man and will commend to the Minister to rescind this measure. It would be brave of him to do so and say that a mistake has been made and that the measure must be reconsidered. We cannot deny children of a minority religious group their wish to be educated in their own schools, as it is their prerogative under the Constitution, ethically and morally.