Free summands of conormal modules and central elements in homotopy Lie algebras of local rings

If (Q, n) -->> (R, m) is a surjective local homomorphism with kernel I, suc h that I subset of or equal to n(2) and the conormal module I/I-2 has a fre e summand of rank n, then the degree 2 central subspace of the homotopy Lie algebra of R has dimension greater than or equal to n. This is a corollary of the Main Theorem of this note. The techniques involved provide new proo fs of some well known results concerning the conormal module.