The Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, has denied that he has a secular agenda.

In a pre-recorded interview on the Coleman at Large programme on Newstalk, the Minister said he wanted to “correct” suggestions by the presenter Marc Coleman, that the Labour Party had such an agenda.

“[W]e do not have a secular agenda. We have a republican, pluralist agenda. There is a real distinction,” Mr Quinn said.   

“You’re talking to me, not to Ivana Bacik or anybody else,” he added.   

And he insisted that the debate on school patronage had not been started by the Labour Party, but by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.   

Mr Quinn has come under criticism from some Church sources after he stated in March that he envisioned “at least 50pc” of primary schools currently under Church patronage transferring to alternative patrons.   

The Catholic Schools Partnership (CSP), the umbrella body for Catholic schools, suggested that this target was unrealistic. They also suggested that his target of beginning to transfer some schools by next January was too ambitious.   

Mr Quinn said that his target of 50pc had been suggested by Archbishop Martin, who is the biggest patron of primary schools in the country.   

“The request for assistance on divesting of schools came from the Archbishop of Dublin,” he said. “And the largest diocese said, on balance, we have 92pc of the schools, we only need about 50pc.”

And he referred to research done by the suggesting that 37pc of parents with children in Catholic schools would prefer to see their children in multidenominational schools.

However, reacting to this on the same programme, Dr John Murray of The Iona Institute and Mater Dei said that he didn’t know where the Minister was getting his 50pc from.

He said really didn’t remember hearing the Archbishop saying he wanted the Church to divest itself of 50pc of schools.     

In April, the Minister launched the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector, which will examine the demand for schools with different patronage, as well as looking at the logistics of transferring schools to new patrons.   

On the programme, the Minister also acknowledged that the Constitution recognised the parent, rather than the State “as the primary educator of the pupil”.   

He added: “[I]t states in the Constitution, with respect to primary education, which is what we’re talking about, that the State shall provide for education, not provide education”.   

He said that while the system as it stood, with the overwhelming majority of primary schools under Catholic schools “fitted the contours of Irish society very neatly”, those contours had changed.