Committee to examine Bill on axing school places for children of past pupils

1st February 2022

A Bill to remove entirely the automatic right of entry for children or grandchildren of past pupils is being considered by the Oireachtas Committee on Education today. The Joint Managerial Body (JMB) secretariat, which represents more than 400 voluntary schools, defends the practice. It says that it “arose from a concern for continuity of family experience and for the primacy of parental choice as protected in the Constitution”.

Drafted by Labour education spokesman Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the proposed Bill would amend legislation introduced in 2018 that limited to 25 per cent of the first-year intake the number of such places.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said the Bill, which has not been opposed by the Government to date, would remove what he calls an “elitist” piece of legislation included, he argued, solely at the behest of certain influential fee-paying schools.

“This is a deliberate attempt to keep the royal bloodlines of succession through particular elite second-level schools, and it was done at the behest of those elitist second-level schools,” he said on Monday.

The JMB counters: “Schools, like families, are not solely operational entities; they thrive on relationships, values, continuity, local community cohesion and loyalties built up over time and, indeed, over generations,” it says.

The submissions suggest that the numbers of schools which operate the parent and grandparent rule is a small minority, and the criterion is usually below that of catchment area, feeder schools and the sibling rule.