Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has said it is wrong for parents to baptise their children only to gain access to Catholic schools.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr Martin said canon law was clear that people “should only be baptised if there’s a reasonable probability that they will be brought up as Catholics”.

The Archbishop added that the end result of baptism was not the baptismal certificate.

“It’s a religious rite of entry to the life of the speculates that “some of the strong correlation between baptisms and birth rates” could be attributed to the admission policies of Catholic schools.

However, this is questionable given that in the 80 percent of schools in the country that are not over-enrolled, there is no need to have a child baptised in order to gain entry.

Archbishop Martin said that the “big problem” faced by Church-run schools is that “we have Catholic schools in areas which are very good and everyone wants to go to them and you have to have some criteria for judgement”.

At the heart of the baptism issue is the fact that some Catholic schools face over-subscription and, in these cases, estimated at about 20% of all Catholic schools, school management can give preference to members of the faith of the school. The majority of such cases currently occur in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Archbishop Martin’s words come in the wake of Ireland’s appearance before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, Switzerland, where questions as to non-Catholic access to schools in Ireland were posed. During that gathering, when asked if Ireland intends to amend section 7.3 of the Equal Status Act – which permits faith schools to admit children from the school’s faith community ahead of other children in the event of over-enrolment – Caitríona O’Brien of the Department of Education said: “That’s the intention, yes.”