Another indicator of the pace of change in Ireland was reported in The Guardian this week as Ireland's newest primary school opened in Balbriggan, Co Dublin. The school - named "Bracken Educate Together" - has been the centre of a national controversy. The pupils are overwhelmingly black, the majority of its pupils with parents from Nigeria and some from the Islamic faith.

A huge population increase, partly due to immigration from Africa, China and eastern Europe, has put enormous pressure on the school system. The result, according to one local councillor, has been the creation of a "mini-apartheid" in the seaside town, with the new "emergency" school almost exclusively filled with the children of immigrants.

Educate Together is the non-denominational schools movement behind Bracken primary. Rowe, its chief executive, claimed that "there is profound, embedded and institutionalised religious discrimination throughout the system, particularly at primary level. This discrimination is the responsibility of the state, not of schools or religious bodies." Mr Rowe said that by 2013 north County Dublin would have an extra 100,000 children, requiring 60 new schools. He was confident that Bracken would "develop to reflect naturally the diversity of the community".

However The Times reported that the people of the town believe that they have been unfairly maligned by the press coverage, pointing to the massive population growth that has placed huge pressure on the existing schools. May McKeon, chairman of the town council, said that Balbriggan was being turned into a scapegoat and that local feeling was running high against the Educate Together organisation.

"We have always welcomed everybody here but it is hard to keep the infrastructure right. Balbriggan's population has trebled in the last ten years. No child has been turned away for either race or religious reasons. I have grandchildren who got into schools by the skin of their teeth. Our welfare offices in this town are overflowing. There are too many financial incentives to come to Balbriggan."

Her daughter, Fiona Kavanagh, said that in the established schools a third of pupils was non-Irish. "The education ministry should have distributed resources between the existing schools and not created a new all-black school because that is in nobody's interests for future integration. The existing schools have been educating together for years."