Parents should be consulted about the kind of primary school they want in urban areas where population growth requires new schools, a report to the Minister for Education and Science has recommended.Once the wishes of the parents have been made clear, the Department should "facilitate local preference by invitation to suitable patrons."The report, by the technical working group of the Commission on School Accommodation, says new primary schools in rural areas should have minimum first- and third-year enrolment of 10 and 30 pupils respectively. The enrolment for schools in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick should be 20 and 60 respectively.These recommendations will come as good news to new Protestant and other minority religion schools, who currently require a minimum enrolment of 24 pupils, and to new gaelscoileanna with a minimum of 20 pupils. Senior Department officials have expressed unhappiness at such low recognition thresholds in a primary system which caters for around 100,000 fewer pupils than 10 years ago. The report recommends a strict 13-month timetable for recognition - and therefore capital funding - of new primary schools by the Department. In the past it has sometimes taken new multi-denominational and gaelscoileanna up to four years to gain permanent recognition.Multi-denominational schools will be pleased at the recommendation that where patrons of a new school do not wish to own their site, the Minister should buy both the site and buildings and lease them to the patrons.The report urges that a "properly resourced property management facility" should be set up to manage the 100 schools the Department already owns, plus any new schools it buys on behalf of patrons.The report notes that the two areas of growth in the primary system are gaelscoileanna and multidenominational schools. Only two new Catholic schools were recognised in the 11 years up to 1997, compared to 56 gaelscoileanna and 13 multi-denominational schools.It stresses that "new schools should not proliferate in conditions of sub-standard accommodation and at the expense of existing schools." To cater for the growing diversity of Irish society, there should be a balance between new schools and improved provision for pluralism and diversity in existing schools. It suggests one model could be the conversion of existing sites to accommodate more than one school.