The Labour party has introduced a Bill to ban all single sex schools within 15 years regardless of parental wishes.

Labour spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin claimed: “The fact that so many of our schools are still separated by gender sends the wrong message to children at a young age about gender equality”. About 30pc of Irish pupils are in single-sex schools.

“Ireland stands almost alone with our gender segregation system and we are out of kilter with the rest of the European world. While the conversation is rightly happening about the nature of gender equality in our society, education must be a feature of this”, he said.

“This Bill is about addressing the legacy of single gender schools and move to fully gender integrated schools within 10 years at primary level and 15 years at secondary level.

The Bill would see all State funding removed from any schools that don’t comply with mixed admissions.