Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

127. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to the concerns of a group (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17169/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

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.

I am aware of the concerns of the Protestant and other minority churches and I 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 4,000 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.