Online Patronage Process System (OPPS)
To access the Data Protection Policy of the Department and details of your data protection rights and who to contact – please see our Data Protection page
The material featured on this site is subject to Government copyright according to the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000. The material may be downloaded to file or printer for personal use only. Where this material is being issued to others, the source including the URL and copyright status must be acknowledged.
The permission to reproduce Government copyright material does not extend to any material on this site, which may be the property of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the copyright holders concerned.
The Logo is the property of the Department of Education and may not be used by third parties in a manner that implies that the user is acting on behalf of the Department when they are not, or where it is linked to aims and activities incompatible with the role and responsibilities of the Department.
The Department’s logo should be used for programmes or projects that are funded wholly or in part by the Department of Education. It should not, under any circumstances, be used by a commercial company to advertise a product.
Written permission for use of the logo is required and will only be granted where a body/agency is promoting programmes / projects funded by or approved by the Department. Contact the section of the Department dealing with the programme / project for permission to use the logo.
The contents of these pages are provided as an information guide only. They are intended to enhance public access to information about the Online Patronage Process System (OPPS). While every effort is made in preparing material for publication no responsibility is accepted by or on behalf of the Department of Education for any errors, omissions or misleading statements on these pages or any site to which these pages connect. Although every effort is made to ensure the reliability of listed sites this cannot be taken as an endorsement of these sites.
The Department of Education respects the rights of its users and does not, as a general rule, collect personal information. Where a user voluntarily provides personal information in response to a questionnaire or survey, the data will be used for research or analysis purposes only.
For general web browsing no personal information is revealed to us, although certain statistical information is available to us via our Internet service provider. This information may include the logical address of the server you are using, the top level domain name from which you access the Internet (for example, .ie, .com, etc), the type of browser you are using, the date and time you access our site and the Internet address used to link to our site.
Some of the above information is used to create summary statistics, which allow us to assess the number of visitors to our site and to identify what pages are accessed most frequently. We use these statistics to help us make our site more user friendly.
This website does not collect any personal data, apart from information that you volunteer (for example, when expressing a patronage preference) and your IP address. Any information you provide in this way is used only for the purpose for which you provide it. Currently these purposes include the submission of a patronage preference, by:
Section 262(4) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act, 2005, states that:
(4) A person shall give to a specified body his or her personal public service, number and the personal public service numbers of his or her spouse; children, where relevant, as required by the body for the purposes of the persons transaction".
Under Section 6 of the Education Act, 1998, "Every person concerned in the implementation of this Act shall have regard to the following objects in pursuance of which the Oireachtas has enacted this Act:
(b) to provide that, as far as is practicable and having regard to the resources available, there is made available to people resident in the State a level and quality of education appropriate to meeting the needs and abilities of those people;
(e) to promote the right of parents to send their children to a school of the parents’ choice having regard to the rights of patrons and the effective and efficient use of resources".
We may collect the following information from each user of this site:
Registration details shared with https://patronage.education.gov.ie
This website uses "cookie” technology. A cookie is a small piece of data or a small text file stored by the browser on your computer, at the request of our server. We may use cookies to deliver content specific to your interests and to save your personal preferences so you do not have to re-enter them each time you connect to our website – our cookies are not available to other websites. In particular cookies enable us:
The table below explains the cookies we use and why
| Cookie | Name | Purpose | More information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Analytics | _ga _gid |
These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. | Click here for an overview of privacy at Google |
Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org
To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
You are always free to decline such cookies, if your browser permits, or to ask your browser to indicate when a cookie is being sent. You can also delete cookie files from your computer at your discretion. Please see links to the following websites for the procedures to follow to manage and delete cookies on your computer:
This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google"), to gather statistics on our website. The statistics we gather help us to provide a better web service for the visitors. For more information on Google Analytics, please visit Google's website
Google Analytics uses cookies to define user sessions, as well as to provide a number of key features in the Google Analytics reports. This means that the cookies are linked to our website domain(s), and we will only use that cookie data for statistical analysis related to your browsing behaviour on our websites. If you choose, you can opt out by turning off cookies in the preferences settings in your browser. You can opt-out from being tracked by Google Analytics by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on for your current web browser: Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on
Articles on our website may occasionally include some useful links to other third party sites that are not related to education.ie or maintained by the Department of Education. Please be aware that once you click to one of these sites, you are subject to that site's privacy policy and not to ours. You may wish to review the privacy policy for each site you visit.