The Minister for Education Joe McHugh has confirmed the patronage of six new secondary schools to be established next year.

School patronage, specifically the continuing domination of national school patronage — still around 90% — by the Catholic Church is one of the hotly-contested grounds in our evolving society.

The Communion season is in full swing. Happy seven-year-olds, as they always were, are swept up in a process they can hardly understand but embrace enthusiastically.

Parents in dozens of areas where new schools will open in the next four years will have to choose patrons online to run them because of past problems with the selection process.

Parents of children of the first school to be divested are concerned about its future.

Plans to further restrict the use of religion as grounds to exclude pupils could be introduced sooner than previously expected, Education Minister Richard Bruton hinted.

Latest: The Minister for Education, Richard Bruton, has "broadly welcomed" the move by the ETBI to no longer hold communion preparation classes during the school day at Community National Schools.

A Kerry school has enrolled just nine pupils after a patronage transfer from the Catholic bishop to the local education and training board.

The choice of schools that parents have for their children has become a social and political hot potato, as pressure grows to remove requirements to be baptised to guarantee entry.

School patron body Educate Together has today responded to comments made by a representative of the Iona Institute on last night's Claire Byrne Live show on RTÉ.

Educate Together has today criticised the Government's plan to speed up the divestment of religious-run schools as "unfair and unworkable".

The Social Democrats have called for an end to State-sponsored religious discrimination in Irish schools.

Update 1.31pm: Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton said today that the current system which allows State-funded religious schools to give preference to applicants of their own faith will continue for the time being.

Latest: A mother attending today's protest against religious discrimination in the Irish education system said that her family was turned down by several local schools - until she had her child baptised.

Education Equality has said it was dismayed to hear Minister for Education Richard Bruton propose a further 12-month delay to a Bill aimed at ending religious discrimination in the area of school admissions.

The Minister for Education Jan O'Sullivan is inviting applications for the patronage of nine new post-primary schools which are due to open this September and in 2018.

Priests should not baptise children whose parents are just trying to get them into better schools, the Archbishop of Dublin has said.

Sinn Féin has called on the Government to support a Bill that would prevent State-funded schools excluding children from entry on religious grounds.

The Minister for Education has moved to clarify the rights of parents not have their children study religion in school.

The Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan has admitted the current Government will not deal with the issue of equal access to schools.

A father has gathered almost 18,000 signatures on a petition to change an amendment which allows schools to grant preference for places to baptised Catholic children.

Educate Together has today welcomed Minister Jan O’Sullivan’s pledge to “reinvigorate” the process of divesting school patronage.

Department of Education rules could lead to "double discrimination" for some schoolchildren, it was claimed today.

The Minister for Education has described the practice of non-practising Catholic parents baptising their children in order to secure places in Catholic-run schools as "fundamentally disturbing".

The Education Minister Jan O'Sullivan says she is "not happy" that some children are being baptised just to get into schools.

A former ministerial advisor says he expects school patronage to become a political issue ahead of the General Election.

A new campaign is underway to prevent schools with religious patronage from turning away children on the basis of not being baptised or of that religion.