It is "unfair and discriminatory" that parents felt they had to have their children baptised to secure admission to schools, Labour education spokeswoman Joan Burton has told the Dáil.

She urged Minister for Education Richard Bruton to accept her party's Private Members' Education (Admissions to School) Bill 2015 amending the Equal Status Act.

The Labour proposal, she said, would “balance the constitutional right of religious bodies to organise and run schools with the rights of the child to have access to his or her local school”.

Ms Burton said the Bill would give much greater protection to minority religions, given that 51 per cent of children must be of a particular religion to maintain its ethos.

“That would considerably strengthen the position of minority religions compared with the current position,” she added.

Mr Bruton said a previous Oireachtas education committee had acknowledged the proposals created potential tensions between articles of the Constitution relating to education and religion and concluded it posed a difficulty when legislating in that policy area.

“The deputy’s Bill has sought to steer a way through that, but it is important we make sure it is robust and that there are not unintended consequences,” he added. “That is why the incoming education committee should be given a period to hold hearings on the legislation and to assess it.”

Equal status

Ms Burton said she did not understand the Minister’s diffidence in dealing with the issue. The Bill would not amend education legislation and was about equal status, seeking to calibrate rights for the religion, the student and the family.

Mr Bruton said it had become good practice to have pre-legislative scrutiny of all Bills coming before the House.

“This Bill raises complex legal and constitutional issues, which I do not say make it unviable, but they need to be examined,” he added.

“That was recognised by the previous Oireachtas education committee and, bearing that in mind, we need to do that.”

Mr Bruton said it was common practice that particular Protestant denominations admitted those of other Protestant traditions to their schools and gave preference to them.

“The Bill, as drafted, would stop that practice,” he added. “There are issues, therefore, that we need to tease out.”

The Oireachtas committee, said Mr Bruton, had the experience to do that, and allowing witnesses to appear before it was the sensible and responsible way forward.

Fianna Fáil education spokesman Thomas Byrne said the overwhelming focus on patronage divestment during the past five years had distracted from the essential question of how children from non- religious backgrounds should be accommodated in the existing structures and the rights of all who had freedom of conscience and school admission upheld.

Fianna Fáil was very much concerned about the issue and had published a policy on it before the election, he added.

Mr Byrne said the Equal Status Act prohibited religious discrimination, but allowed schools to enrol co-religionists in preference to members of other faiths when a school was oversubscribed.

“It is wrong that 20 per cent of all schools in Dublin are oversubscribed and they seem to be the most active in applying religious selection criteria,” he said.