The Roman Catholic Church has lost the battles over divorce, contraception and gay marriage in Ireland. But it still wields what some parents call the “baptism barrier”: influencing admission to public schools.
Almost
all state-funded primary schools — nearly 97 percent — are under church
control, and Irish law allows them to consider religion the main factor
in admissions. As a practical matter, that means local schools, already
oversubscribed, often choose to admit Catholics over non-Catholics.