Mr. Pat McKelvey:

I endorse what Mr. Crone said. The ETBI believes that publicly-funded schools should serve their local communities first and foremost. It is then necessary to ask several questions. I respect and understand the need for schools to have continuity and tradition, and to maintain those aspects. Schools that do not use this clause, however, and which have never done so, have also maintained their traditions and continuity and been very successful. Therefore, the idea that this clause is needed to do achieve that aim seems to be somewhat of a stretch, given that we have serious evidence that other schools that do not use the clause managed to do exactly the same.

Another aspect concerns the value this clause has in the legislation. If the clause is not being used, then why is it there? I agree with Deputy Ó Ríordáin. My comment for the legislators in response is that what is important regarding this clause is not a measure of how many, but of if any. This cannot be a case of needing to reach a threshold regarding the number of children adversely affected before we decide. In a republic like ours, we should be saying that every child counts. We do say that, so if every child counts, then even one child affected in this way is one child too many.