Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I broadly commend the overall objectives of the Bill. Sinn Féin is of the view that the proposed legislation takes a number of progressive steps towards the removal of discriminatory practices between children in the school enrolment process. For that reason, we will support the Bill on Second Stage.

Sinn Féin very much welcomes the important specific provisions made by the Minister for the admission to school of children with special educational needs. We particularly support the proposal that agencies such as the National Council for Special Education and Tusla have the power to designate a school place for a child who is having difficulty in securing admission to school. We agree that schools should, where necessary, be compelled to establish ASD units. The evidence on the ground indicates that many schools are creating soft barriers to the enrolment of children with special educational needs and turning such students away, forcing them to go elsewhere. In some circumstances, the next school could be 30 minutes away and the child could be forced to attend a different school from their siblings. This is entirely unfair both on the child and his or her parents. This discriminatory practice is entirely unacceptable and it is welcome that Bill seeks to address it.

We must point out that the reasoning many schools offer when they refuse to enrol a child with special educational needs is that they simply do not have the required funding or resources available to accommodate the child. This goes to the heart of many problems within the education sector which are legitimately down to historical under-investment in the sector. If we are in agreement that a State school should be compelled to enrol students with special educational needs, we should also be in agreement that they must be adequately funded to do so, otherwise this section of the Bill will be ineffective.

Sinn Féin gives its support to the Bill's proposal to prohibit the practice of seeking fees and contributions for the enrolment or continued enrolment of a child at school. This will come as welcome news to many families across the State and perhaps our attention should next be drawn to dealing with the growing phenomenon of seeking voluntary contributions from parents which is becoming prominent across Ireland.

The Bill provides for a much greater level of transparency on each school's admissions policy. Sinn Féin welcomes the fact that, from now on, schools will have to publish their admissions policies. This will provide for a much more balanced playing field for parents in looking to enrol their child in a particular State school and mean that they will no longer necessarily need to be in the know regarding what will give their child a fair chance of enrolment.

We would have liked to have seen the Bill go a little further in this section. For instance, the Bill does not prescribe what each school's admissions policy should or should not include. It is left entirely to the discretion of the school to decide. The view of Sinn Féin is that the State should look at having a level playing field or playing some role, rather than simply outsourcing the responsibility to the patron or whichever board is in charge. This is where Sinn Féin begins to see issues with the legislation as drafted. If the big picture is eliminating all barriers and discrimination between children in the enrolment process, we argue that the Bill falls some way short of that objective. As things stand, section 7(3)(a) will still allow State-funded schools to discriminate against a child based on his or her parents' religious background if a school can prove that acceptance of the child is essential to maintaining the ethos of the school. The wording is quite vague and we should call out the section for what it is - a fudge. As others have said, it is an Irish solution to an Irish problem.

We have to discuss whether it is a good idea to continue to segregate children as young as four and five years based simply on their parents' faith, particularly children from minority faith backgrounds.Arguably, this section would be in contrast to many of the principles on which we would like our education system to be built in the first place. Education is a fundamental cornerstone of our society. Our publicly-funded education system must be governed by the principles of equality. Our schools should be inclusive places. They should welcome diversity irrespective of background. There should be an emphasis on children from all different backgrounds coming together to learn together in a secular environment. Their religious needs can be met at the end of the school day or after school. This is what happens in the small number of multidenominational and Educate Together schools at present. By fudging the baptism barrier issue, we are going to create further problems down the line. For instance, how do we define what is meant by maintaining the ethos of a school? How does a school make the case that it needs to discriminate to protect its ethos? It is possible that this section will allow minority schools to continue to discriminate on the grounds of faith even when the school is undersubscribed, simply because the proportion of the favoured faith falls below a certain percentage which is not prescribed in the legislation.

If Catholic schools in certain parts of the country begin to see their numbers dwindle ten or 15 years from now, they may begin to believe their characteristic ethos is under threat. At this point, they could turn to this section to seek respite. This Bill gives us a chance to put this issue to bed for good, but we are missing that chance. Equality is an unambiguous concept that does not need to be qualified, but that is exactly what this Bill seeks to do. It attempts to qualify equality with exceptions. The Equal Status Act 2000 does the exact same thing. The United Nations, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Office of the Ombudsman for Children have recommended that the 2000 Act should be amended to give effect to the principle that no child should be given preferential access to a publicly funded school on the basis of his or her religion. The Government refused to deal with the 2000 Act on Committee Stage. It is about to compound that error by instilling the same discriminatory proposal in this legislation.

Sinn Féin will support the Bill on Second Stage today because it represents progress in several areas. A conversation still needs to be had regarding the baptism barrier because the legislation as it is currently drafted leaves a number of questions to be answered.