The development of integrated schools will be a part of the "essential work of desegregating" society in Northern Ireland, it was argued in Queen's University in Belfast last night.
Mr Colm Cavanagh, who was giving the 1998 Dunleath Memorial Lecture, said the work of reconciliation faced every organisation in the North. He believed most people would be very supportive if the Catholic and Protestant churches were to find ways to run schools jointly.
Mr Cavanagh, the former chairman of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, said that even before the Troubles, the community operated in segregated ways. "But now that Northern Ireland has become even more highly polarised, the opportunity for children to meet and mix normally is vastly less available even than it was 30 years ago."
It was necessary, therefore, to build structures to bring this about. "Integrated schools are one vital part of this work since schools are where children spend about one quarter of their lives." Mr Cavanagh said that the Association of Inter-Church Schools in Britain showed that it was both theologically and physically possible for the Protestant and Catholic churches to run schools jointly.
Arguing for `parent power', he added: "In Northern Ireland, if the churches or the politicians or the Education and Library Boards, or the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools cannot find a way to offer parents the option of joint, shared, integrated schools, there are plenty of people who will help Protestant and Catholic parents to create it for themselves."