THE OIREACHTAS should look at making positive discrimination mandatory for schools in their admissions policies, a judge suggested yesterday as he allowed an appeal by a secondary school against a ruling that it had discriminated against a Traveller boy refusing him admission.
At the Circuit Court in Clonmel, Judge Tom Teehan acknowledged that the legislators must, like both the courts and school boards who frame admissions policies, seek to strike a balance between legitimate competing interests in relation to school policies.
Judge Teehan made his comments when he allowed an appeal by Christian Brothers High School in Clonmel against a decision by the Equality Tribunal which found that the school had indirectly discriminate against Travellers when it refused a Traveller boy admission.
John Stokes (13), through his mother, Mary, and instructed by the Irish Traveller Movement Independent Law Centre, lodged the complaint against the school on the grounds that it had breached the Equal Status Act when it failed to admit him to the school.
Christian Brothers High School’s admission policy was based on three criteria – that the applicant be Catholic, that he would have attended a recognised feeder primary school, and that he would have had a father or brother who attended the school prior to him, Clonmel Circuit Court heard.
Some 83 of the 174 applicants for the 140 available places in 2010/2011 met all three criteria but John Stokes did not meet the third criteria regarding parental attendance and his name went into a lottery with others who did not to meet the three criteria and he failed to get a place.
Lawyers for John Stokes had argued that the admission policy requiring parental attendance was discriminatory against Travellers as it put them at a disadvantage given the low secondary school attendance rates among Traveller men in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yesterday Judge Teehan said what was significant was whether the parental rule was discriminatory against Travellers and if so, could it be objectively justified by reference to a legitimate aim and means to achieve it which could be deemed to be both appropriate and necessary.
Judge Teehan said he was satisfied that the parental rule was discriminatory against Travellers and new immigrants such as Polish and Nigerian applicants whose parents were unlikely to have attended the school.
In such circumstances it fell to the school to show that its admissions policy could be justified by some legitimate aim, and he found that one of its stated goals of supporting the family ethos within education amounted to such a legitimate aim.
He also found the policy was appropriate in that applicant numbers exceeded available places in all but two years in recent times and the parental rule helped strike a balance between admission based on academic results and admission based on exceptional circumstances.
Judge Teehan ruled that the parental rule was a necessary step to creating a balanced and proportionate admissions policy.
