OPEN Letter to the Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn:

ONE of the ironies of the career of John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin from 1940 until 1972, and the towering figure of 20th century Irish Catholicism, was that for someone who had such presence and domination, he was a poor communicator.

A young Catholic man bludgeoned to death by loyalist killers had escaped an earlier attack by diving into a river as gunmen opened fire, an inquest heard today.