Dr. Michael Redmond:

Schools do not apply a faith criterion for entry in our sector or in any of the other post-primary sectors. Faith, the faith of the family or one's religion have no bearing on admissions, oversubscription or other inclusionary or exclusionary criteria. That said, schools are not for Catholics only where they are Catholic in ethos. They all must and do welcome students of all faiths and none. Whereas there may have been historical issues around that particular challenge, they are no longer in place and they are quite rightly illegal and are not practised in any school in our sector or in any of the other sectors.

Deputy Ó Ríordáin rightly used the phrase "the rough end" of a criterion. We will keep coming back to this time and time again. The rough end of the grandparent criterion is one that it is up to the Oireachtas to legislate for and to consider in terms of the values of the State. At the same time, there are rough ends of the other criteria that will apply. They could be geographical. We could have the same anomalies where we have somebody who does not get a place in a particular school, who lives in a house a short distance away from another person who does get a place, because the catchment boundary had been drawn in a particular way. There are other ones to do with gender and whatever else. Certainly I can assure the members that no board of management draws up or applies its criteria lightly. They feel the pain of the families who are on the rough end of every single criterion that must be applied. That is universal across all our sectors.

Not only does the State have a duty to legislate in terms of admissions criteria and enrolment frameworks but also in terms of infrastructure provision, removing some of the rocks in the river of parents and families who quite rightly want to have their child receive the best education they can.

Parental choice will never be removed from the Constitution. The flow down from that is quite different from other jurisdictions in Europe and elsewhere. Parental choice reflects the values of those who originally drafted the Constitution and in contemporary society they are still very well accepted and affirmed by people, irrespective of whether they have religious faith. At the same time in the end there will be rough ends of every single criterion and it is the privilege of Oireachtas Members to draw those up and to give schools clarity. Sometimes the removal of one criterion for example, will simply allow the others to expand where they are applied. We have seen that they are not applied universally or even extensively. Therefore, the removal of this one will allow a certain levelling of the water. The water will still hit a bulkhead at some point and there will be a rough end of the next one and subsequent criteria. The State, as opposed to the Oireachtas, has a real duty to invest in as many places and to enrich the calibre, quality and inclusion policies of every school in the State.