School catchment areas in Ireland

Ireland does not have school catchment areas. Not for primary, not for secondary, not anywhere in the Republic. If someone has told you which catchment your address is in, they are describing something that has no legal existence.

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Irish house-buying. People pay a premium for an address believing it carries a school place. It does not. Here is what actually decides one.

What the law says

The Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 is the governing law. Under it, every recognised school must publish an admission policy and, each year, an Annual Admission Notice. Those two documents decide admission, and nothing else does.

Three consequences follow, and each of them surprises people:

1. You may apply to any school in the country.No school may refuse to consider an application because of where you live. There is no boundary that excludes you and none that admits you.
2. Living nearest guarantees nothing.Distance is only relevant if that particular school chose to make it a criterion — and many rank siblings, past pupils or parish first, ahead of proximity.
3. Applying early changes nothing.The Act forbids ranking by application date. A school may not operate first-come, first-served, and a waiting list may not carry over from year to year.

So what does decide it?

Only this: did more people apply than there were places?

If the school was not oversubscribed, it must admit every applicant. If it was, it applies its published selection criteria, in the order its own policy sets out. Common criteria, roughly in the order schools tend to rank them:

• A sibling already in the schoolUsually the strongest criterion there is, and the reason a first child is much harder to place than a second.
• Children of past pupilsCapped at 25% of places by the Act.
• A named feeder school, or a parish or defined local areaThis is the closest thing to a catchment that exists — but it is this school's own defined area, written in its policy, not a boundary drawn by the State, and the school next door may define a completely different one.
• Distance from the schoolSometimes, and rarely first.
• A lotteryWhere criteria leave applicants tied.

Some schools may also give priority on ethos grounds within the limits the Act sets, and a school may not charge a fee to apply.

What people mean when they say "catchment"

Usually one of three real things, none of them a catchment:

• A school planning area.The Department of Education divides the country into 314 of these to forecast where classrooms will be needed. It is a planning instrument. It confers no right to a place, and your child may attend a school in any of them. Browse them here.
• A school's own defined area.Written into that one school's admission policy. Real, and binding on that school only. Read it on the school's page.
• School transport eligibility.Bus Éireann will carry a child who lives beyond 3.2 km (primary) or 4.8 km (post-primary) from their nearest school. This decides transport, never admission — and children in special classes travel under a different scheme entirely.

What to do instead

1. Read the school's admission policy, not a summary of it. The criteria and their order are the whole answer.
2. Find out whether it was oversubscribed. If it was not, you are in. We publish this for 89 schools, read from their own notices.
3. Note the closing date. Missing it is the most avoidable way to lose a place. We hold 342 of them on the deadlines page.
4. Apply to more than one school. There is no penalty for it and no boundary stopping you.

The hardest schools we have figures for

Read from each school's own Annual Admission Notice. These are the places where "which catchment am I in" would have been the wrong question by a wide margin.

Coverage is partial and growing — these are the schools whose notice we could find and read. Always confirm with the school itself.

If you are buying a house

Buying near a school buys you proximity, which may or may not be a criterion, and which is ranked below siblings almost everywhere. It does not buy a place. Before you decide, read the admission policies of the schools you are counting on, and check whether they were oversubscribed. If a school takes four applicants for every seat, an address 200 metres away is not the advantage it appears to be.

This page describes the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is a different jurisdiction with different rules.