Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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91. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps he will take to ensure religious minorities are not undermined by changes to school admissions policies; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22407/17]

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 January to 20 March 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.