The Archdiocese of Dublin has no desire to provide an education for children of parents who are not interested in a Catholic education, according to Anne McDonagh, director of education at the archdiocese.
"We must stick to our enrolment policy of providing an education for Catholic children and siblings first. This enrolment policy has been public and unchanged since the Education Act 1998," Ms McDonagh said yesterday.
Ms McDonagh's comments follow complaints by parents in Balbriggan in north Co Dublin that their children had no school to go to yesterday morning because they had been refused admission to Catholic schools in the area.
Almost all of these children are Irish-born of African parents.
Ms McDonagh said that the shortage of school places was a result of bad planning and not of the archdiocese's enrolment policy.
The first day at school of up to 90 children in Balbriggan has been postponed until an "emergency" school is built under the patronage of Educate Together, the movement which organises the establishment of multidenominational primary schools.
The new school is expected to welcome its first class on September 17th.
The area that includes north Dublin, east Meath and south Louth is expected to accommodate 30-60 new primary schools over the next three years to accommodate a growing population, according to Paul Roe, CEO of Educate Together.
Mr Roe said that this situation came as no surprise to Educate Together and that the Department of Education had contacted the organisation over the summer holidays to ask them to provide patronage for a new school in the Balbriggan area.
A meeting was held in Balbriggan by the department on Saturday for the parents of children who do not have a place at a school.
Those who attended the meeting noted on RTÉ radio that all of the parents were black Africans.
"Where are all the Irish? . . . I don't know how it's going to be, but it's going to be quite difficult having just black people in your class," one parent said.
Despite the predominance of foreign national parents at the meeting, Michael Doyle, regional manager of the National Education Welfare Board, insisted that the problem of a lack of school places in Balbriggan was not a racist issue.
"Families are experiencing difficulty with school placements and the problem is not just confined to foreign nationals," he said yesterday.
According to Fintan McCutcheon, principal of Balbriggan Educate Together National School, some parents are getting their children baptised specifically so that they can gain entry to Catholic-run schools.
In a statement issued yesterday, the Department of Education and Science said that it would "make provision in key areas earlier than planned to tackle this issue for the 2008/2009 school year".
The department did not comment on the delay in providing an adequate number of school places for children this year.