Sir, – I sympathise with the anonymous writer of the "To Be Honest" column on school admissions policy ("It's time to discriminate in favour of non-Catholics", Education, March 11th), but the answer to discrimination cannot be more of the same.
The writer states “Catholic schools can and do prioritise Catholics; Protestant schools do the same for Protestants and I actually think that’s fair enough.” It is the very opposite of fair enough.
Imagine Dublin Bus allowing Catholics to board first. Imagine HSE hospitals putting Protestants to the top of their waiting lists. Imagine public libraries reserving their most popular books for atheists. We would not accept this, so why do we allow State-funded national schools to discriminate?
The solution is not separate schools for children of different religions or none. This only creates division, and in any case is totally impractical outside of large urban areas.
If schools are oversubscribed, prioritise children by age or distance from the school. Almost anything would be fairer than segregating them on the basis of their parents’ religion. – Yours, etc,
EIMEAR LYNCH,
Meadow Vale,
Deansgrange,
Co Dublin.