Ms Anne McDonagh:

It is fair to ask why they decided to go to one side rather than the other. There were three chairpersons and three principals on one side and two chairpersons and two principals on the other, which eventually became one chairperson and one principal when the schools amalgamated. They made this decision at local level. It may have been that there were about 700 pupils on the Dominican site and only 278 pupils on the De La Salle site. That is what I think happened. The De La Salle school had been losing numbers for a few years and was trying to address this issue. It applied to the patron for change of status, as a number of other schools have done when losing numbers. They are thinking all the time of where they will get pupils. It may have been that the other school had 700 pupils. That is what I think happened.