Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have some questions, the first of which relates to the point made by Ms Reid O'Doherty. The Bill deletes the previous section 29 but brings in a new power for the National Educational Welfare Board to designate that schools must take not just special needs pupils, but students who have been refused admission because of oversupply or whatever. What are the witnesses' views on that? I will come back to them on that point.

I am very interested in the common policy idea. In my area we experienced a problem, which has lessened in recent years, in that there was more demand than supply at primary level due to the boom in young families and so on. I found that what excluded most people was the first come, first served policy where parents had to put down their child's name when they were born. The issue that has arisen a lot today is to do with the religious discrimination. I agree with that in principle but in my area the schools that are the most inclusive in terms of a social mix are the Catholic schools. We can have a situation where at one end of the spectrum students in Educate Together schools are almost totally white and middle class whereas at the other end of the spectrum 80% or 90% of the children excluded from those schools were immigrants. The first come, first served policy can discriminate against people who are immigrants, Travellers and those with a social disadvantage, but a common admissions policy might be a way to get schools to co-operate and ensure students can get into a local school if that is what they want. I would be interested to hear any comments from the witnesses on that.

I will call witnesses who did not contribute a second time. I will start with Ms Duggan who may wish to respond to the issue raised with her.