‘Risk of race riots looms over pupil places deficit’

IRELAND faces the danger of race riots like those which engulfed France two years ago if efforts to integrate immigrant families in schools are not hastened, an education expert said yesterday.

Michael Moriarty, general secretary of the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA), said he supported Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin’s view that there must be a greater mix of patronage models for primary schools.

The IVEA represents city and county Vocational Education Committees which are likely to be given a role in operating primary schools for the first time in the next few years, the first of them in north Co Dublin on a pilot basis next year.