The Department of Education has published the results of a survey of parents in another 38 areas to find out 
how many want to send their children to a non-denominational school. Once again, there was a low response rate and little interest was shown in alternatives to Catholic schools.
In 15 of the 38 areas (with 306 Catholic primary schools in total), the survey found little or no appreciable demand for a school with a different patron.
In 23 areas, the Department claims that there was sufficient demand for the provision of one school with a different patron.
But even in these areas, the actual level of demand was quite weak. The Catholic Church’s Council of Education estimates that “those who expressed an opinion in favour of change amount in each case to between 2.2pc and eight percent of parents with children in school in these areas”.
In addition, it is interesting to note that, given the small number of parents who responded to the survey, there is obviously little dissatisfaction with the status quo because if there was, the response rate would have been much higher.
In 2008, the Iona Institute commissioned a survey on parental attitudes to denominational schooling.
Unsurprisingly, it found very strong support among parents for the principle that parents, rather than the State, should choose the sort of school that their children attended. However, the level of support for denominational schooling was less marked.
When asked whether they would choose to send their children to a Catholic school, a State school where all religions were taught or a school where no religion was taught, just under half (49pc) said they would choose a Catholic-run school.
However, when parents actually had the chance to register their demand for an alternative school in practical terms this year, only relatively few did so. Perhaps when push comes to shove, Irish parents are less keen on a non-denominational school model than they might like to tell opinion pollsters.
On the basis of its survey in the latest batch of areas, the Department of Education seems determined, however, to press on with its plan to divest schools from Catholic Church patronage. To the extent that this is backed by genuine parental demand, this is welcome.
But if the Department is serious about school choice, it must be real choice, not simply choice in name only.
Real choice would mean that the remaining Catholic schools have to be able to maintain their authentic ethos. But it is precisely this which is under threat for Catholic schools and other denominational schools.
Ruairi Quinn’s Forum on Patronage and Pluralism laid out a series of recommendations targeted at so-called stand alone denominational schools (schools in areas where there was insufficient demand for a school with alternative patronage).
It recommended the abolition of Rule 68, which allows denominational schools to permeate the day with their own ethos, and the amendment of the Equal Status Act to curtail the right of such schools to admit children of their own faith first.
In addition, it recommended that denominational schools be required to give equal prominence to the religious symbols of all faiths and that prayers be “respectful” of the beliefs of all children and that “sacramental preparation, or education for religious rites of other belief systems, should not encroach on the time allocated for the general curriculum”.
Such recommendations would turn denominational schools into de facto non-denominational schools, robbing religious parents of their right to send their children to the school they want, thereby denying parental choice.