Talk to parents about getting their children into primary school and the chances are that words like pressure, panic and worry will come into play, particularly if they live in cities or in newly-expanding areas, where places are deemed in short supply.

"A lot of parents nowadays are thinking about what is the best school for their particular children, rather than simply sending them to the nearest school," says Canon John McCullagh of the Church of Ireland.

Parents choose schools for different reasons. While the freedom to choose is positive - it is enshrined in the Constitution - it has its downside. In some areas it means that while certain schools are vastly oversubscribed, others have places going a-begging. "Parents of boys want co-education for them, but parents of girls prefer they go to a single-sex school - even in the same family," says Deirdre O'Donoghue of Educate Together.

"Snobbery" is the reason given by one source for parents raised in the Catholic tradition choosing Protestant schools for their offspring. This may be a tad unfair. Until the advent of multidenominational schools, anyone wanting a non-Catholic education for their child had no option but to apply to a Protestant school. Also, many Protestant national schools have traditionally offered smaller classes than some of their Catholic counterparts.

Some parents chose a school for its particular social mix - solidly middleclass, for example, or, alternatively, diverse in social and ethnic terms.

One parent, whose home is equidistant between an inner-city national school and a Gaelscoil, has opted for the all-Irish school. "It's nothing to do with snobbery," she insists. "I understand the staff at the national school are wonderful, but it's in a very run-down, quite devastated area. The Gaelscoil is in a much more leafy, pleasant place. Of course I want my child to go there." In some areas, local schools can be by-passed because another school feeds a popular second-level school.

"This can cause problems for some schools, especially in the newer areas," O'Connor says. "Excellent schools with excellent staff are being bypassed in favour of feeder schools." He points to the Knocklyon area of Co Dublin, where the pressure for school places has been much relieved by the opening of Knocklyon Community College. Before that, there was no post-primary school in the area, he says.

Schools built on local-authority housing estates also tend to be circumvented by families who later move into new private housing in the area, O'Connor says. Sadly, the decision of parents to avoid certain schools can result in their closure - whatever their merits. O'Connor points to the primary school at Mount St Anne's, Milltown, Dublin, which closed five years ago due to a falling enrolment.

"The school had a policy of welcoming Travellers," he says. As a result, the intake of other children living locally began to drop. "Not one child from all the new housing in the area went there. They went everywhere else - over to Sandymount, out to Dalkey -instead," says O'Connor.

Despite the archdiocese's policy on Traveller enrolment, schools continue to fear that their numbers will drop if they admit Traveller children. Teachers employed by the Department of Education to work in schools with Traveller children report any problems to the archdiocese. "It usually ends up successfully," he says.

Interestingly, difficulties with Traveller enrolment are an urban rather than a rural phenomenon, according to O'Connor. "We never have any difficulties enrolling Travellers in the rural schools in our diocese," he says.

Meanwhile, the search for the "ideal" primary school goes on for many parents. "We were concerned that the local primary schools were not up to scratch," comments another inner-city parent. "We bypassed quite a few national schools and applied to three or four schools - Gaelscoileanna and project (multidenominational) schools. We were looking for a school with a good social mix, that was highly motivated and involved in the community. In primary it's not what they learn that's important, but how pupils, and parents, are treated by the teachers. We wanted a school with an ethos that was about openness and community, and not about control and indoctrination."

"How to put a good social mix into primary schools is a real social dilemma," says O'Donoghue. "Can you allow all the wealthy parents in the area to send their children to one school, which means that all the money goes into that school?"