Community meetings last month were marked by anger and confusion over charges that schools were being “railroaded” into a change of patronage from Catholic to secular management.

It is part of a pilot initiative to provide greater choice for parents.

However, parents at one of the Catholic schools in the area — Scoil Áine — said a survey found that 83 per cent of parents were opposed to divesting or reconfiguring the patronage of the school.

Meanwhile, unpublished data collected by the Department of Education show multidenominational primary schools are much more likely to be oversubscribed than Catholic schools.

More than a quarter (25.9 per cent) of multidenominational primary schools are oversubscribed compared to just 5.8 per cent of Catholic schools. As a result, the inability of Catholic schools to prioritise children of their faith when offering places affects a very small minority of schools, the survey notes.

In the case of these oversubscribed Catholic schools, records indicate that in 90 per cent of cases there was another school with a Catholic ethos in “close proximity” which had spare places. Close proximity was defined as within 2km in urban areas and 5km in rural locations.