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

I have some questions myself. Has the De La Salle Order been approached about the possibility of handing over the campus?

On a more general level, Ms McDonagh spoke earlier about the need to provide for alternative patronage. She said that the archdiocese welcomes the fact that there will be other schools which embrace a different ethos and which will contribute in their own way to the rightful pluralism of educational provision in today's Ireland. She went on to say that Catholic education has a vital place in our education system. I am concerned about this because personally, I am not a fan of the diversity of patronage approach because I feel it has the potential to lead to a more segregated and less inclusive school system.

We discussed this in the Dáil last week. The effect of diversity of patronage in my area is that it is becoming racial segregation. If the Catholic school becomes a school for just Catholic children, is that not less inclusive than what has been provided heretofore, when all children went to the Catholic school? I am not sure how many schools there are in Ballyfermot, but there are towns with only one school, a Catholic school. Surely the objective should be for the Catholic school to be the local school that is open to everybody in the community? As I read it, we are now talking about a more exclusive Catholic school. Is that really desirable when it is a State-funded resource?