Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to discuss this important issue. I thank my colleagues, Senators O'Loughlin and Malcolm Byrne, for bringing this motion forward. It is an opportune time with September coming up as many people will be looking for school places.

The experience from Limerick has been referred to here by many people. It works most of the time, but not always. That is clear. It took a long time to get it almost right and it is still not perfect. For many years, we were in the news for the wrong reasons when people could not get school places. Senator Kyne mentioned that many people want to go to what are known as the better schools. To me all schools are the same, but some people want to go to the better schools. There were big queues for them and people would not put in an application for certain schools and then some schools were left with empty places while other schools had waiting lists. That is why the common application system was set up in Limerick. There has been a lot of collaboration between the principals of the different schools and, especially in schools known to have longer waiting lists or more applications than there are places, the principals have been proactive in meeting parents, going through the different criteria on their admittance policies and advising parents on whether their children would be successful. That approach has been a success. I had five people last February who were not successful. They have subsequently been able to source a school place and it was done through collaboration and through the education centres. When people fail to receive a place, they apply to the Limerick Education Centre and the education centre works with the principals and schools.

However, in some places we have section 29 cases being taken. There was a case this year where one school changed its admissions policy. Almost a whole class of applicants who had wanted to attend the secondary school of the primary school they were in were told they did not meet the criteria. That got sorted out subsequently because the parents stuck together and took a section 29 case and the children had to be accommodated. There are ups and downs with it, but overall the common application system has worked. However, it boils down to collaboration between the principals of different schools.

I agree with some of the assumptions about some schools. Senator Kyne asked whether parents should declare after their children receive a school place that there may be issues, such as a child having autism or needing an SNA for support. Some schools are very supportive of that and there are many successful ASD units in schools, but from my experience some of the schools sometimes do not want children who have an issue.

I welcome that the former Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, worked with the Minister, Deputy Foley, on the delivery of a new community special school that will open in Limerick in September. This is most welcome. Limerick has been crying out for it for a long time because the criteria around admission to special schools are restrictive. They relate to whether people live within a certain catchment area or live too many miles away from the school. In some cases people have to go to the nearest school, but sometimes that school is not adequate for the needs of the child. That is an area I would like to see being looked at.

The Department should consider rolling out the common application system, but it needs some tweaking for it to be successful. I hope the Department looks at the questions raised by this motion to see how it can work within the criteria to look at rolling the system out across Ireland.