Ms Anne McDonagh:

I will respond to the Chairman's question before I answer Deputy O'Brien's questions.

Traditionally, Catholic schools took everybody, and to this day many Catholic schools have people of all religions and none. The schools are very inclusive. As I said in my presentation, quite a number of parents who are not Catholic choose to send their children to Catholic schools, which proves in itself that they are inclusive.

A requirement of the 1998 Education Act is that schools develop an enrolment policy and publish it. They had to specify what children they would accept into their schools. That meant that for the first time people decided that different types of school would take in different types of child. Before that, when we were children, people went to the local national school, but the Education Act determined that an enrolment policy had to be established and then published. Catholic schools are very inclusive, and that has been proved. An ESRI report proved that they are more inclusive than other types of primary school.

I will now respond to Deputy O'Brien's question on whether the De La Salle congregation was approached with a view to having the reorganisation on their site.