“The General Synod of the Church of England ... will consider ‘The Irish Problem and Ourselves’ published on behalf of the Board of Social Responsibility. Since one of its two authors, Canon Eric Elliott, is a prominent member of the (Irish) Committee on the Role of the Church, and since the document itself draws freely from the reports of that Committee, it might be said that the English Synod is being presented with a Church of Ireland viewpoint”.

“It is often asserted or assumed that Protestants represent a colonial population while the Roman Catholics are the native Irish. This is at best a dangerous half-truth. It is probably the case that most Protestants are descended in the direct line from English or Scottish ancestors, who entered the country at various times from the later sixteenth century onwards. But such families have commonly inter-married with the earlier layers of population. And besides this there is a very substantial number of Protestants whose direct Irish ancestry goes back to Medieval times and earlier. As for the Roman Catholic population, it contains such a very large inter-mixture of English and Scottish, that it cannot possibly be regarded as representing any single strain”.