Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am positively disposed to this legislation. The two tests that apply to any legislation concern whether it solves a problem and whether it will result in unexpected consequences. Interestingly, I played the admissions game on the way up on the train today. Tramore is quite a good place to run this tote experiment. It is an old town with an expanding young population that is creating demographic pressure on the school system. There are schools of varying ages. One is more than 100 years old, another is 50 years old and yet another is 30 years old. There is also a newer school, which started up in the past decade or so. It boils down to the questions of whether the right of those whose families have lived in the town for a longer period to access one of the two older schools trumps that of others living in the town and whether the right of access of someone living in the city of Waterford trumps that of a person living locally. I find myself in that situation in that I am not from Tramore but from the neighbouring parish. My team played Tramore in Gaelic games. I would have lost out on the admissions game because there is pressure on places. I do not believe the criterion under discussion is being applied to remove the pressure on cases, but I would have lost out because I am new to the parish, as the saying goes. There is a legitimate question to be asked about the balance of rights because there is a genuine tradition in the case of the school that has been in existence for more than 150 years. The school has serviced the town of Tramore for that period, and people have a deep and emotional connection with it, which I understand. That is what we have to weigh up. In weighing it up, I come back to the first test, that of whether we are solving a problem that exists.

I read the admissions policies of the schools in question. There are four primary schools and one post-primary school in the town. Two of the schools have the provision under discussion and three do not. It is interesting that all the schools have their admissions policies online, but the admissions statements are not as easy to access. Therefore, I could not see in black and white how often the provision had been applied and how many people it had applied to. Do we have reliable figures on this?

Dr. Redmond talked about running a school survey. A school survey is self-selecting in that whoever will gain access to the school will reply to it. Do we have hard and fast figures on how many schools have the provision in question and the number of children it has been applied to on the State-wide level? Can anyone provide me with a picture of the problem we are trying to solve?