A little over 14pc of schools would ditch their religious ethos and become non-denominational according to reports of the Department of Education’s survey of parental preferences. This drops to just 7pc once schools with poor participation in teh survey are excluded.

The figures indicate much less demand for divesting Catholic schools than recent headlines suggested.

Late last year, the department asked all households with primary school-going or pre-school children their preference for school patronage.

In April preliminary totals for the whole country were released.

While headlines said 40pc of parents wanted change, only 41pc of those surveyed responded, which meant a much smaller fraction, 16pc, of eligible households actually expressed a desire for change.

Now, local results have been collated with preferences grouped around individual schools.

While those results have not yet been made public, they have been communicated to schools and school bodies.

They show majority support for change in a little over 14pc of schools, according to the Catholic Education Partnership (CEP) .  However, this figure falls to just under 7pc once schools with a low response rate (below 40pc) are excluded.

Only 77 schools nationally meet these particular criteria, of which 51 are in Dublin or Cork.  If schools with a response rate of under 40% are excluded, that figure falls to around 40 schools.