Mr. Hubert Loftus:

I thank the Senator for ensuring the questions are brought to me sooner. The Department's experience of boards of management may not be fully consistent with the views of the Deputy. We consider that boards manage schools in a very open and transparent way. The inspectorate's reports on boards and schools is published. As the representative of the INTO remarked, the chief inspector's report is clear in terms of the feedback from surveys and inspections that are carried out on the quality and the management of schools by boards of management. That is not to say there are no issues with individual boards. I can confirm for the Deputy that there have been a small number of cases in which the Department has taken the lead in seeking the dissolution of a board of management. That would have been on foot of a serious school inspection report. There have been such cases.

In total, there are more than 3,000 primary schools. At any given time there may be ten or 20 schools that do not have a board of management. The reasons vary. The school may be in a start-up situation and it may be simply impractical to appoint a board at the time in question, the patron might have determined that it is not appropriate to have a board, or the board may have been dissolved based on the views of the patron; there is an element of the Act that provides for that.

Section 28 and the matter of enrolment was raised. Deputy Daly may be aware that the Minister proposes to go to Government with a school admissions Bill to provide a framework for school admissions. The Minister will propose amendments to section 29 of the Education Act. The Minister intends to put a parent and student charter on a statutory footing. The drafting of that legislation is well advanced at the moment and the intention is for the Minister to bring it to the Government soon, in the coming weeks.

I will ask my colleague, Mr. Tom Deegan, to make a comment on the number of complaints to the Department relating to boards.