Tony McLoughlin (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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259. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the way he will address the role of faith in determining the admission to minority faith based schools and the concerns of parents of minority faiths who wish to ensure they can enrol their children to a school of their own faith in view of the recent Education (Admissions to schools) Bill 2016 and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16288/17]

Tony McLoughlin (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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260. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the way in which he will protect the admission of minority faith students to minority faith schools that are oversubscribed, such as a school (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16289/17]

Tony McLoughlin (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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261. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps he will take to address the challenges in limited and rural areas in which oversubscription in primary and secondary schools and lack of capacity are creating difficulties for minority faith students that wish to be placed at schools of their own faith. [16290/17]

Tony McLoughlin (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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262. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the legal protections that exist to support the provision of faith based education by religious minorities here and the right of minority faith students to attend primary and secondary schools of their own faith; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16291/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 259 to 262, inclusive, together.

The Deputy will be aware that I ran a public consultation process from 24th January to 20th March 2017 on the role of religion in the school admission process and possible approaches for making changes.

I believe that it is unfair that preference is given by publicly funded religious schools to children of their own religion who might live some distance away, ahead of children of a different religion or of no religion who live close to the school.  I also believe that it is unfair that parents, who might otherwise not do so, feel pressure to baptise their children in order to gain admission to the local school.

However I have also specifically outlined in the consultation paper of the need to avoid possible pitfalls and unintended consequences, including possible impacts on minority religions and on the wishes of Protestant, Jewish, Islamic and other communities to be able to run schools in accordance with their ethos and admit children from their communities to attend those schools.

Other possible consequences to be avoided include possible breaches of the constitution, technical and administrative difficulties impacting on the capacity to effectively run the system of over 4000 schools and the possibility of creating ‘postcode lotteries’, such as other countries have experienced, resulting in pronounced divergence in the quality of schools in more advantaged compared to less advantaged areas.

The 8 week phase of receiving written submissions formed part of the broader 12 week consultation process which will include additional steps, including any follow-up consultation that is required, collation of responses and development of next steps.

My Department has begun the process of examining the submissions and formulating next steps. Clearly I will not make any decisions around next steps until such time as all of the submissions have been examined and considered.