Madam, - Bob Osborne (Education Today, February 6th) gives a very important summary of the current plight of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland.
He identifies a group of "determined leavers" who choose to go to university across the water. Twice as high a proportion of Protestants leave as Catholics. Only 25 per cent return as graduates. Young Protestants, especially boys, from disadvantaged backgrounds are much less likely to enter higher education than Catholics. He describes this as the exodus of the brightest and the best from the Protestant community.
This situation is bad for all of us in Northern Ireland, both Protestant and Catholic. It will be a social disaster if we are left increasingly with a Protestant population composed of those less well educated, less well-off, more embittered with their lot and resentful of the relative progress of Catholics.
Prof Osborne says that this is food for thought for unionist politicians. That is as far as an academic may choose to go. As a politician I would go further. What we are seeing is convincing evidence of a fundamental failure of strategic leadership by unionist politicians.
It is in the interest of all of us that they find a new direction, based not on withdrawal from a shared relationship with the rest of us on the island, but on a real engagement and negotiation of a shared future. I would ask all in positions of leadership in the Protestant community to ask for that, and do so in a public way. - Yours, etc,
DECLAN O'LOAN,
(SDLP councillor),
Ballymena,
Co Antrim.