Catholic teacher training college, Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, has defended the number of hours that its teaching students spend on religious knowledge.

In an interview with the Irish Catholic, Dr Daniel O’Connell, lecturer in Religious Education, responded to recent criticism in a report by the Teaching Council, which suggested that the college’s teaching course gave a disproportionate amount of time to the teaching of religion.

The report found that teachers spend four times as long learning religion compared with science, but that they also spend four times as long learning to teach Irish and art.

Dr O’Connell said that there were a number of factors behind the emphasis which the college gave to religious instruction.

He said that national school teachers were required to teach religion for a half an hour a day, which he described as “a heavy load to place on teachers”.

He added: “For a trainee teacher to engage in his or her subject to that extent, and in a thoughtful and reflective manner, the time offered at Mary Immaculate is required.

Dr O’Connell also pointed out that the vast majority of primary schools were still Catholic-run, and that this required them to be “well trained to teach a curriculum subject”, specifically religious education.

“How are they to do that in a competent manner without a ‘religious literacy’?” Dr O’Connell asked.

He added that the students of Mary Immaculate College themselves had “never approached the college with any criticism of the hours dedicated to religious training”.

Dr O’Connell accepted that the college would have to examine its response in the future to the decline of religion in Ireland.

However, currently, he said “over 91 per cent of schools are Catholic with an expectation that their teachers can engage in a catechetical element”.