Ms Eithne Reid O'Doherty:

I thank Deputy O'Brien for his question, which I welcome. I do not necessarily agree that the section 29 process is flawed. The jurisdiction is narrow in that it is confined to section 29 of the Act and we work within it on enrolment, suspension and expulsion. We are talking about enrolment today. One can always improve. Currently, in terms of the role we play, mediation has not come up in any of the discussions yet, but a mediator can speak to the parties. There is often an inequality of arms in that one is talking about a school board of management that is quite conversant with the legislation, the system and the language. On the other hand one might have a parent with literacy difficulties who is not a professional who seeks to get equality and justice for his or her child. Our job as mediators is to explain the issue and what is happening and to give the parents a voice without being biased or partial. We redress the imbalance at the mediation stage. The second stage of the mediation is that we attempt to get a resolution where both parties can win if there is fluidity and they can move towards a resolution.

Where there could be improvement is in the provision of more training. There is an expert panel in place. Some people are there for quite a while and they have a lot of experience. One could broaden the remit of the training to include training by the Office of the Ombudsman. I mentioned Article 42A. We do not know what it means yet until it has been litigated. The Ombudsman is the expert on it as the office has carried out research. I read that 42% or 47% of all complaints coming to the Ombudsman concern education so there is expertise in the office on the matter. The Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Tribunal are other places where training could be accessed. We do not deal with equality issues. They are dealt with in a different forum.

I am sure the Bill will be enacted with amendments. The parental rule derogation of 25% will have to be monitored. Who will do that within the system? Schools say they are full. How do we know when that is the case? Who makes the decision? We are talking about accountability and transparency. An external body could review and inspect in certain cases.

To go back to the St. Molaga’s case, the school said it was full for very objective reasons. It had made decisions on health and safety grounds and educational practice that it was full and it refused children. The Supreme Court looked at the case and said that the section 29 committee, as well as having a review jurisdiction would also have a full right of appeal, which means it sat in the role of the board of management when it made the decision to refuse the children. It is important to retain an independent appeals mechanism to sit in the place of the board of management and to examine how it reached decisions through its policies and processes and to question whether it made the right decision in terms of capacity and the allocations involved at the implementation stage.