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

The way in which the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill is intended to work is that schools can have an admissions policy. We are ruling things out that they cannot have in their admissions policies, for example, religion in the case of the vast majority of schools, but they can have other things in their policies. They could prioritise siblings of current students, pupils from feeder schools and then all other applicants or whatever. Therefore, there could be a waiting list. For example, all the siblings might be admitted but not all the children from feeder schools. In that case there would be a waiting list consisting of a given number of children from acknowledged feeder schools and then, below that again, other applicants who did not fit into that category. There might be ten next in line as having come from feeder schools who, under the admissions policy, were to get priority above others, and then there would be the others. If an appeal was about whether a child had come from a feeder school, he or she would be taken from the second list and put onto the first list of those waiting. That is what occurs here. Where a ruling occurs, if a child should have been in in the first place, for example because he or she was sibling of a current pupil, that child would have to be admitted to the school. Perhaps a child should have been counted among the pupils from a feeder school but was not. That is the sort of thing we are considering.

There is a possibility of waiting lists under this scheme. Where a school is popular it will have to have a ranking of how it will make decisions, which may be based on catchment areas, feeder schools or whatever other rules. A waiting list can legitimately form. What we are banning is waiting lists of the old style under which, if a person applied when a child was born, that child would have priority ahead of a blow-in. That is being abolished but there can legitimately be a series of waiting lists under this Bill.

We are providing that, where a school's procedures have unfairly put a child into an incorrect category, the child must be restored to his or her correct category. That category could be admission in some cases or it could just be joining the waiting list in the appropriate position in other cases. For example, age order can be used in waiting lists. That might be how a school decides to order all the children in one category. It might decide to take the oldest children first, which would create the ranking. If there was a mistake in the recording of the date of birth, it could clearly be said that child should be put among the older children who would be first to be admitted. If the Senator's amendment was accepted, in the case that a mistake had been made in the child's date of birth, he or she would have to be admitted ahead of older children who ought to have been ahead of him or her.

The section gives the options for the findings these reviews may make. The same issue comes up in amendment No. 10. In that case we are dealing with a section 29 appeal rather than with the internal school procedure. I could not accept the Senator's amendment but I will make sure that we ensure there is no question about the section's application and I will come back to the Senator on that on Report Stage. Any decision would be subject to judicial review immediately. We could not sustain a situation in which it was found that a child should have been in a school but in which we say that, although the mistake was made, the child is still not getting in. That would undermine the whole purpose of what we are doing.