Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the Report Stage amendment that will be debated in the House next week. I am of the view that it constitutes a fair and balanced response. I share the view of a lot of Members that it is not fair that in publicly-funded schools, 95% of which are denominational, if a child does not subscribe to that religion then another child from a long distance away can get priority or people may be forced to baptise their children simply to get access to schools. I do not think this is fair to parents. I hope the amendment we have worked on and brought forward will gain support in the House.

The Deputy's question raises other issues. For example, how can we extend diversity? We had a discussion earlier on new schools and 61 new schools have been opened since 2011. The vast majority of these have gone to non-denominational patrons. In the case of primary schools, all of them have gone to such patrons.

That reflects parental preferences. I do not know if the Deputy was here earlier but we went through how those are developed.

Separately, under a former Minister, Ruairí Quinn, there was an effort to have a patronage divestment model. That led to ten schools being established with multidenominational patrons. The scheme probably did not work as well as the former Minister had hoped and we are now introducing a new "reconfiguration" process, as it is being described, that would seek to have the transfer of patronage while schools are still running rather than after amalgamation and closure. I will rely on education and training boards, ETBs, to undertake surveys to establish where there is a demand and work with the existing patron to promote alternatives. There are a number of elements in how we are promoting diversity and seeking to get a better environment for children in our schools.

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