Over 90% of Irish primary schools are denominational, yet recent survey data (June 2026) shows substantial and widespread parental demand for multi-denominational education. These graphs explore that gap, with a particular emphasis on how preferences between parents and school staff/boards of management differ.
Data sourced from the Department of Education's 2025–2026 Primary School Survey, including the results summary report available here. Note that the results for the staff and board of management are not available in the downloadable spreadsheet from DEY website, the results are instead embedded in the summary report.
Code available via GitHub.
Note: Figures are interactive!
Figure 1. Percentage of households (with children in school, and not yet in school), and staff & boards of management who prefer multi-denominational education, across each county in Ireland.
A note on school staff & Board of Management survey methodology: The school staff and board of management member survey was made available to primary school staff and members of boards of management nationally. The target population for this survey was 84,285 staff and board of management members. A total of 32,999 responses were submitted. Following validation, 32,901 valid responses were retained for analysis. This represents a final validated response rate of 39.0% of the eligible staff and board of management population. (Source: Report Section 4.1, p.25.)
Figure 2. Stated ethos preference among households with a child not yet in school (n=56,227), grouped by their intended future school type. Each bar represents 100% of households intending that school type, split by whether they actually prefer a multi-denominational (green) or denominational (grey) ethos for that school. This isolates demand for change: households intending a denominational school but preferring multi-denominational represent unmet demand, while households intending and preferring the same type represent confirmed preference. Percentages are recomputed here from raw counts reported in the source; this base (56,227) is not independently verifiable against the published survey spreadsheet.Source: Department of Education and Youth, Primary School Survey — Results Summary Report (June 2026), Section 3.1.2, p.14.