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

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. It is a very important issue. As he rightly says, the census shows the degree to which our society is changing. As of today, probably northwards of 20% of young parents express either no religion or none of the established religions. It poses a challenge to our system in which 96% of schools are denominational. We have to approach this on a number of fronts. One is the diversification of schools. We are trying to bring new schools in, transfer schools and offer more choice. The issue is how we deal with religion as a criterion of admissions. I have very clearly put on the record time and again that I do not believe it is fair for a school to admit a child from a long way off in preference to a local child simply because that child is of a particular religious denomination. I also do not believe it is fair that parents should feel under pressure to baptise their child simply to get admission to schools.

I have put forward four different possible solutions to restrict the use of religion as a criterion. One is to restrict it to the catchment area. Other solutions are the nearest school rule or to confine the religious preference to a quota of applicants. The fourth option is to do away with religion altogether as a criterion but to look at ways in which the ethos of schools could be protected.

The issue of minority schools comes up. Many people would feel rightly that minority religion schools should be protected. If it were an open access system, some minority schools would not survive because they would be swamped by children of an ethos other than of their own. Those are the constraints. There are other constitutional constraints that we are working within and there are many other issues, such as whether it is feasible to go down the catchment route since there are no catchments. How would we define catchments and would there be one mother and father of a row when we try to decide the catchments in specific areas? That would make it very impractical to do.

We have had the submissions. They were not overwhelmingly in favour of getting rid of the baptism barrier. There were a very substantial number of submissions on the opposite side of the case. We had a forum where we discussed this in great detail and we asked people to look at two things. They looked at finding solutions rather than sticking to where they came from. Many people had very strong, legitimately held views that are diametrically opposed to others. We had that forum and there was no consensus breaking out of it. We are looking to see how we can do this. I very much welcome that parents want to raise their children in their traditional faith. It is a good thing. Parents are the primary educators. We should seek to facilitate them but we cannot do that at the expense of parents who have a very different view. We are trying to balance this. I have only just seen the report of the Oireachtas committee. It is fresh off the printing press. I favour change in this area, as the committee does. It gets down to the detail of what we do.

We have decided in the other House that there will be two tracks. We will proceed with the existing Education (Admission to Schools) Bill and deal with the issues there, which are important. It will say that where a school is not oversubscribed, it must take every child regardless of religion and anything else. That will be the law. It is only in the 20% of schools that are oversubscribed that the issue arises. We are putting into that law, for example, a power for the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, to designate a school for a child with special needs. That is another important power. In the other House, the Labour Party put forward a Bill which included a catchment solution. It will proceed to Second Stage at the end of June. It is on a separate track. It is not my intention at this stage to try to resolve the religious issue. Committee Stage of the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill will be next Wednesday. I do not think we will be ready with a solution for next Wednesday. I do not want to hold up the largely agreed admission improvements while we resolve the other issue. I am absolutely committed to resolving this issue and I am looking at practical ways it can be done. I have to get assurance that any change I make is legally robust, as there is constitutional provision in this area, and that it is practically implementable.The forum did not resolve that and more work will therefore have to be done to try to find a solution to bring people with us on what the Senator recognises - as do I - is an area in respect of which changes must quickly be made.