Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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869. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will provide an up-to-date map of the school catchment areas for Cork east. [45933/25]

Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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870. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will provide an up-to-date map of the school catchment areas for Waterford. [45934/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 869 and 870 together.

Under the Education Act 1998, the question of enrolment policy in individual schools, including the setting of catchment areas, is the responsibility of the Board of Management on behalf of the school patron. The selection process and the enrolment policy on which it is based must be non-discriminatory and must be applied fairly in respect of all applicants. However, this may result in some pupils not obtaining a place in the school of their first choice. The Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 requires schools to clearly set out their selection criteria in their admission policies. Schools have discretion in relation to their admission criteria and how they are applied. Living in a particular catchment area is one criteria that a school may apply. The criteria to be applied by schools and the order of priority are a matter for the schools themselves. My department does not intervene in the criteria set by a school.

My department's main responsibility is to ensure that schools in an area can, between them, cater for all pupils seeking school places in the area.

The school planning areas provide a useful means of projecting demographic demand in a localised area or areas, thereby allowing the department to determine oncoming growth at a relatively localised level to inform recommendations and decisions on where additional school places may be needed.

However, there can be a high degree of inward and outward mobility of children between school planning areas, particularly in urban areas, and parents are free to apply to enrol their children in any school, whether that is in the school planning area in which they reside or not.

In the majority of cases the Boards of Management of schools do not use school planning area boundaries as part of their admissions policies, or catchment areas within those policies. However, the department wishes to be transparent on the approach taken to the analysis of demand for school places and has undertaken to make SPA maps available. The publication of these boundaries provides this geographical information to the public on an open-source platform available at the link below.

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In most areas, school planning areas were based on traditional school catchment areas where all primary schools were assigned to a post-primary feeder area (typically a population centre or town), containing one or more post-primary schools. With the introduction of small areas in Census 2011, these feeder areas were amended to align with census small areas. The current school planning areas take account not only of local groupings of schools, but also of natural boundaries, census small areas and other local conditions.

As stated above, the question of enrolment in individual schools, including the setting of catchment areas, is the responsibility of the Board of Management on behalf of the school patron and my department does not seek to intervene in decisions made by schools in such matters or have access to such maps. It is the responsibility of the managerial authorities of all schools to implement an enrolment policy in accordance with the Education Act, 1998.