A Kerry primary school has brought a High Court challenge after a committee set up by the Department of Education ruled it had to enrol two additional students.
The school was asked last September to enrol two siblings. It told the family that it could not take them because the maximum student capacity in the school had been reached and its classes were full.
The children's mother appealed the school's refusal to enrol them to the Department of Education & Skills. The Secretary General of the Department then established a three-person committee to consider the appeals.
In their decisions that committee upheld the mother's appeals, and ruled last month that the school should immediately admit the two children.
Flawed
The school's board of management, however, claims the committee's decision is flawed and has brought High Court judicial review proceedings seeking to have the decision that it must enrol them set aside.
Represented by Feichin McDongah SC the board claims the committee erred in law and applied the wrong legal test when arriving at its decisions.
The committee, it is claimed, sought to apply provisions of the 2018 Education (Admission to Schools) Act in relation to the application to enrol the children in the 2020-21 school year.
Counsel said those regulations do not operate and have no legal effect in respect of admissions made before September 2021.
Oversubscribed
It is further argued that the committee erred by finding that the school was not oversubscribed, and that the school had failed to comply with the 2018 Act.
In its action against the Secretary General and the committee the school's board of management seeks an order quashing the committee's decision, and that the appeal be remitted back before a new committee for a fresh consideration.
The school also seeks declarations including that the appeals committee decisions is irrational, contrary to common sense, null, void and of no legal effect.
The mother of the children seeking to be enrolled at the school, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is a notice party to the action.
Permission to bring the challenge was granted on an ex-parte basis, by Mr Justice Charles Meenan. The case will come back before the court in early March.
