The majority of the public want to keep the Angelus on air, with most of complaints coming from “secular quarters”, according to the Head of Religious Content at RTÉ.

However, a poll conducted online of more than 31,000 readers by The Journal.ie last week found that 70.3% of people didn’t want the Angelus to be scrapped.

RTÉ’s Roger Childs said polls suggest there isn’t any great public clamour to scrap the Angelus.

He said he is yet to receive a complaint from a member of another faith community; rather, “it tends to come from secular elements of the community who remain a minority, albeit a significant one”.

“The few complaints, and there are very few complaints, seem to come from secular quarters and insofar as they’re ever organised then they’re from lobbies like Atheist Ireland and the Humanists Association of  Ireland who see it, perceive it, as a Catholic imposition and an anachronism. Sensitive to those complaints I’ve tried to update the treatment of it on television at least so that it’s more visibly all-inclusive, that it’s for people of all faiths and none.”