Archbishop Eamon Martin has said that claims of many parents feeling under pressure to baptise their children to gain school places when a school is oversubscribed is “overstated”.

Speaking during an interview on RTÉ Radio’s Countrywide programme at the weekend, the Primate of All Ireland said that, while there may be examples of parents baptising their children based on a perception that it would smooth access to a local Catholic school, he found himself “resenting the implication” that there was widespread pressure on parents to do so.

“It is rare that a Catholic school will use the criterion of baptism,” he said. “It is one criterion. In Northern Ireland it is never used, it’s not even ‘on the books’.”

Stating that he would “hate to think that baptism is some kind of stamp you would have to get in order to get into a school”, Archbishop Martin said, on a personal level: “I have never in my 28 years of priesthood had somebody coming along to say to me, ‘I want my child baptised because I want them to get into a Catholic school’.” The Archbishop went on to state that suggestions that people are getting their children baptised on a widespread basis simply in order to gain access to the local Catholic school was “an insult to people who choose to have their children baptised because they want them to be brought up in their faith”.

Challenged on a perceived procrastination on the part of the Church regarding ongoing divestment of Catholic schools, Archbishop Martin dismissed suggestions of a Church monopoly on schools but agreed “there should be a more plural offering of schools in Ireland”.

Acknowledging calls in some quarters for greater and faster divestment, the Primate pointed out that there was still strong support too for the retention of Catholic schools by parents.

Referring to studies undertaken during the work of the Forum on Pluralism and Patronage in 2012, he said: “When we did surveys on the ground we found that a lot of people value their Catholic school [and] they value the Catholic ethos of their school.”

Despite this, he concluded: “The Catholic Church has no interest in having a monopoly on all of the schools of Ireland. It is far more important to have a strong Catholic ethos in a school that wishes to be Catholic.”

Meanwhile, asked during the programme to reflect on the same-sex marriage referendum of last May, Archbishop Martin asserted his continued belief that “marriage is between a man and a woman” and said the Church had played its part in keeping that view part of the debate during the run-up to the referendum. On this, he said, the debate demonstrated how important it was that “the Church in the public square is given space and room to make its point and make it clearly, to try to explain where the Church is coming from, especially to the faithful”.

Acknowledging that “today there are very many families in this country who perhaps do not live their lives exactly in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church”, the Archbishop added that “we are becoming more aware that we’re made up of many different situations. But from the point of view of our Church, these people are still part of our Christian family and part of our Catholic family. And we want them to be.”