Fr. Paul Connell:

The second level system is slightly different from the primary in this regard. When we said that "catchment" might be problematic, it is that the definition of "catchment" might be problematic for us. I might use the example of my own school because this is a part-time role for me. My main job is principal of St. Finian's College in Mullingar, which is a diocesan school. Traditionally, we had many boarders from across the entire diocese of Meath and when we stopped taking boarders ten years ago, the patron asked us to try to continue to serve as many parishes as possible around the Mullingar area because Mullingar has quite a few second level schools.

Our admissions policy is quite simple. We take siblings first and after that the eldest by date of birth across the board. Interestingly, that leads to a very diverse school population, both in terms of religious affiliation and of nationality of origin. It is something that is seamless from our point of view. We do not dwell on it but last year, for example, when we were celebrating 1916-2016, on flag day we allowed the children from the other countries to talk about their flag in their original country. We discovered, to our surprise, that we had 29 different nationalities represented. There are many different traditions and approaches across our sector, depending on what part of the country one is in, and so we would argue there should not be a rigid definition of "catchment".