"So will we have to baptise our child?", a soon to be first-time father – ahead of me in a queue for coffee - wondered aloud on Monday afternoon.
He’d been following that day's coverage of Richard Bruton's plans to reform the role that religion plays in deciding who gets preferential access to publicly funded schools here.
His baby is due in May and he said he was dreading the thought of having to baptise the child simply in order to secure a school place.
Mr Bruton has put four of what he calls "solutions" out for public consultation. None of the options remove the so-called ‘Baptism Barrier’.
Instead they aim to curtail it somewhat.
The support of key players is already gathering around the first of the minister’s four options.
This envisages the creation of catchment areas for publicly-funded religious run primary schools.
Religious run schools - Catholic schools for instance - could continue to be allowed give preferential admission to Catholic children, but only to Catholic children who live within their catchment area.
When they've all been accommodated, non-Catholic children living within the catchment would come next, before Catholic children from outside the catchment are considered.
On Monday , the Catholic Primary School Managers Association told RTÉ News that it favoured this option. The Head of the CPSMA said the body had already been considering it.
Fianna Fáil also favours a catchment area approach, according to its last election manifesto, and the Labour Party does too.
The latter has proposed an amendment to the Equal Status Act to allow for the introduction of catchment areas. It’s this act that allows religious-run schools to discriminate.
Fine Gael is supporting the Labour Party bill. The party’s support was reiterated by Mr Bruton on Monday, although he said there were "significant issues that would need to be worked out" first.
With the Catholic Church, Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil all likely to support the idea of catchment areas, the Labour Party bill should succeed. Its exact form however, following amendments, remains to be seen.
But would the introduction of a catchment area policy change much?
Apart from the complicated matter of creating school catchment areas across the entire country, the children of minority or non-religious families would still be discriminated against.
They would still be second class citizens when it comes to accessing their local school.
Unless school catchment areas are very small indeed, then parents would still feel obliged to baptise their children simply to ensure access to that school.
Ireland would continue to be in breach of no fewer than four UN conventions to which it is a signatory. Since 2011 four UN committees have called on Ireland to amend legislation to ensure that all children are treated equally when it comes to access to schools.
The Minister for Education acknowledges that all four of his proposed options present their own difficulties and complications.
His other options include limiting preferential access on religious grounds to a child’s nearest school; introducing religious quotas; and removing all barriers but allowing schools to require prospective parents to sign a declaration of support for its religious ethos. (Since Monday, the Department of Education has issued a clarification. It says this requirement is "only a possible approach within option four". The clarification adds "it is not necessarily the case that the fourth approach would require this", and that this will be considered during the consultation.)
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Ombudsman for Children have both called on the Government to entirely remove the exemption contained in the Equal Status Act that allows religious-run schools to discriminate, so that all children are treated equally.
Groups campaigning for equal access want this too.
On Monday, the minister spoke about an inherited education system “that we haven’t designed today or yesterday”.
Certainly the Catholic Church dominated character of Ireland’s education system is an anomaly that this generation has inherited.
But among the several problems associated with that, the ‘Baptism Barrier’ is one that’s relatively new.
Professor Emeritus of Education at UCC Aine Hyland reminded attendees at Monday’s event that the Equal Status Act, which gives religious run schools their exemption, is only 16 years old.
"The church never had a legal right to exclude children before 2000", says Prof Hyland, "the mystery for me is why that derogation is not just taken out".
