Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Some of the points I wished to raise were raised by my colleague. The Ombudsman for Children also made a submission on the education Bill in which she made some recommendations. She recommends that the derogation with respect to the past pupil criterion be removed. It is a strong recommendation. She has made other points, including on the Equal Status Act. There are conflicting rights. There is the right of a school to its own ethos and the right of individuals to access a proper education, with no school being able to impose its ethos on an individual. We are going through a transition and I do not believe the Bill is sufficiently robust to deal with much of it. I accept the point made by Pavee Point Travellers Centre. The Department of Education and Skills stated last week it only happened in an over-subscribed scenario. However, there would have to be a very robust system in place to check that schools would not be able to state they were full or over-subscribed. Perhaps there should be further checks at that level in terms of exactly how many schoolchildren were in the class, how many classes there were in that year and so forth. The position would have to be checked in detail. The question is whether the Department could do all of this in micro detail because that is what would be required. It would be very easy for a school to state it was over-subscribed and leave it at that. I do not think the legislation is robust enough to deal with the issues that have been raised.