Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for joining me for this conversation. The Joint Committee on Education and Skills has released its report on the Equal Status (Admission to Schools) Bill in which it calls for an end to the baptism barrier. It shows there is ever growing cross-political support for an end to this law. Does the Minister have a response to the report and its recommendations and will he table an amendment to the Bill reflecting that? Since the Minister announced the public consultation on the role of religion in primary school admissions in January, there has been a national conversation on the need for religion to be gone as a discriminatory admission criterion in State-funded schools. We know from research that the vast majority of citizens, including parents with children in school, want it to end. The baptism barrier, which allows State-funded schools to discriminate against children because of their religion or belief, is one of the great inequalities of our time and has no place in a modern, pluralist democracy. The Minister's Department received thousands of submissions in the public consultation on the issue, and I understand the vast majority of those were in favour of removing the baptism barrier. Will the Minister confirm that? One in five people baptised their child to ensure school admission which I think the Minister will agree is problematic. These realities need to be reflected in our education policies. Latest census figures show an Ireland that is very different from when the baptism barrier was created. The 2016 figures show a 73.6% growth in people with no religion, which marks the growth of the largest cohort in society, while 45% of those who identify as having no religion are young adults around my own age, between 20 and 39. They are part of the cohort most likely to have young families and children who are attending school at present or who will be attending in the coming years. These CSO results have to have an impact on how we set our policies and shape our education system. The Minister is aware of these figures because he quoted them. It shows the understanding he has of the changes that are needed in order that school policies reflect the Ireland of today. It is not the job of school admissions policies to dictate to parents the religion in which they should raise their children. The State should not facilitate it. The function of the State is to uphold the right of every child to an education. The Oireachtas is nothing without the people. We are here to support children and young people, not stakeholders. It is through applying the best interest of the child principle that we will see a solution.

I will reiterate my questions. Does the Minister have a response to the committee report and its recommendations? Will he table an amendment to the Bill to reflect those recommendations?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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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.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I am encouraged that the Minister favours change in this area. The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, in its submission to the consultation, said that contemporary Ireland is one of the most diverse countries in Europe, with over 16% of the population being foreign-born and over a quarter of children being born to at least one foreign parent but discriminatory practices such as the baptism barrier hinder the process of integration. There is only one proposition for Irish identity in our age and that is diversity. Do we value all of our community's contribution to the betterment and social integration of this island? I do not think the baptism barrier reflects the Ireland that we live in today. I appreciate the Minister's response.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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To be fair to schools under religious control, many operate a very open policy. As I said, only 20% of them are over-subscribed. The remainder admit every pupil regardless of background and many of them do so in a very good way. Perhaps not all meet the very best requirements and we are trying to develop that. We will have a parents and students charter and, under the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2016, which is due to proceed to Committee Stage next Wednesday, we will require that schools should specify how they will deal with children who are not of the relevant denomination. We can work with schools that have a denominational ethos to make them a much more positive environment for every pupil and we can also work on more choice and on diminishing the use of religion as a criterion for entry. We have to move on all those issues together.

I have learned that education is very much a community. There are many really strong communities running schools of excellent quality. One has to bring many of those people into the process. One cannot say that one model is to be thrown out in favour of another. For a long time, communities have been running schools and building a community ethos around them. It is a question of trying to change but bring as many people as possible with us. That is the journey that we are on.