Ms Tina Merron:

The report talks about the Department of Education's concern that this puts integrated education on a higher level of preference. The bottom line is that there is an Education Authority and another statutory body for Catholic schools. Integrated education does not have a statutory planning body. There is no strategy for integrated education. As a result, we believe that this would just put integrated education on an equal footing with the other bodies. That would allow for a lot of lost time to be made up. It should also be remembered that one of the reasons we want this Bill to go through is to help meet parental demand. There is a lot of parental demand but children are not getting into integrated schools. If there is not an integrated school in your area, you do not have the choice.