Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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189. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the safeguards to be put in place to protect minority faith schools; if his attention has been drawn to the wide spread concerns of boards of management, particularly of small rural schools under the patronage of protestant churches with regard to the proposed changes to school admissions policies (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21511/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy may be aware I ran a public consultation process from 24^thJanuary to 20^thMarch 2017 on the role of denominational religion in the school admission process and possible approaches for making changes.

A number of submissions were received from Protestant and other minority faith schools. In this regard, as I have said throughout, I am mindful of the need to avoid possible pitfalls and unintended consequences such as possible impacts on these 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.

The 8 week phase of receiving written submissions formed part of a broader 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.