The Catholic Primary School Managers' Association (CPSMA) says it has received legal opinion that confirms schools with enrolment policies that favour Catholics are not breaking the law.
The group was responding to a position paper from the Equality Authority challenging the view that an exemption in the Equal Status Act allows restrictive enrolment policies where such policies are - according to section 7 (3) of the Act - "essential to maintain the ethos of the school".
The Equality Authority stated: "Given that the vast majority of national primary schools in the State are denominational and continue to allow students of other denominations to attend, there would be difficulty in proving that it is essential to maintain the ethos of a particular religion to require every student to be of that denomination."
According to the CPSMA, however, a school does not have to prove that its policy is essential to maintain the ethos of the school. It maintains that it is "only in cases where the school refuses to admit a person who is not of that denomination the school must prove that this is essential to maintain the ethos".
A further suggestion by the Equality Authority that article 13 of the European "race" directive, forbidding direct or indirect discrimination, might further limit the restrictions set out in enrolment policies was also rejected.
The CPSMA stated: "The principle of denominational education, which has long been not only accepted but chosen by thousands of parents over the years, both in Ireland and abroad, would be deemed to comprise a 'legitimate aim' within the means of the race directive."
The CPSMA insisted: "No child has been excluded from schools on the grounds that such an exclusion was necessary to maintain the school's ethos." The problem, it maintained, was due to overcrowding.
"The serious shortage of school places that has arisen in a small number of areas is not as a result of the CPSMA admission policies."
Equality Authority chief executive Niall Crowley agreed that overcrowding was a huge problem. Indeed, according to Mr Crowley, the Equality Authority's paper on enrolment policies was published in the context of school overcrowding.