Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

In the survey we carried out there was one school doing it. What really strikes me about this is that schools do not do this lightly. Having been a school principal for 20 years, we spent a lot of time on this whenever we were oversubscribed. Schools must have something in terms of priorities, and this was one criterion that this particular school had chosen. At the same time, obviously as community schools we would say that the schools should be for the children of the community. When a school is in a position of being oversubscribed and the school board finds itself having to prioritise, it is not an easy place for a school to be. In this one instance, therefore, we have a situation where there are children living within the school catchment area, and the school must try to prioritise in some way who gets a place over another child. This is what this school has chosen to do. The lottery system applies in all of our schools also when there is oversubscription. I have been at the other end of that when there can be an unintended consequence of the parent who had attended the school saying, "We want to be part of the school for our child, and now that is not there." They do not like the lottery system and find it difficult.

This is not something that is done lightly. The work that we did with schools over the past couple of years when this Bill was introduced, and the work we did around what it is now to have an admissions policy, was very meaningful. With these policies, we now have a mechanism whereby they can be reviewed every year following the process. Schools can actually look at this each year. There is a lot that is positive in this Bill, although it is not an easy one.