Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The biggest difference is that students are no longer charged tuition fees to attend and therefore parents will no longer have to pay fees. Anyone who wishes to attend the school will be able to attend, rather than it being limited to people who can pay the fees. Having said that, to be fair, in the Protestant fee-charging sector we have block grant funding available for schools to assist people to attend. Furthermore, most fee-charging schools have some arrangements in place to subsidise entry. Effectively, it opens up the entry. The schools will be funded like every other school. In both of the schools that have come into the free scheme, they also operate boarding and they are free to charge for boarding. Boarding and fee-charging are not necessarily the same. We have a number of boarding schools that are in the free scheme.

The overall funding available to the school will reduce because the funding available to the school with fees was higher given the combination of State funding and funding from fees, but schools are planning to manage within that system.