Dr. Ken Fennelly:

Several members asked about oversubscription, which is the easier issue. There are 174 Church of Ireland schools in the country, with another 24 Presbyterian, Methodist and Quaker schools, so there are approximately 200 Protestant primary schools. Approximately 55 of them are in urban areas, and oversubscription is an issue for them. It is also an issue for another ten or 15 schools in specific rural areas. That adds up to 50 or 60 schools from the 200, so approximately 25% or 30% operate on oversubscription criteria. It is not a major problem in terms of numbers but it is an issue for the specific schools.

In terms of content and format, it was one of the first issues that struck us as the board of education sat down to reflect on this. Head 4 indicates that regulators "may" require that the admissions policy of the school "shall" set out the characteristic spirit and general objectives of the school. That means the ethos statement of the school will be in the admissions policy that must be given to the parent. That is fine. The head also indicates that there will be prescription of the "content" of the policy. We have a concern that as a board tries to formulate its own policy regarding admissions to its school - it should be remembered that we are considering this through the prism of religious ethos - the Department may stipulate that it cannot ask about whether a person belongs to a particular parish or the denomination of the child. It seems to be relieving the board of its autonomy or the scope it had before. That is why I used the term "interventionist", as we feel there is a hand coming into the work of the board from the Department of Education and Skills or the Minister that was not there before. That feeling was very strongly expressed at our board meeting.