The pace of handing some Catholic schools in the archdiocese of Dublin to new patron bodies has been a slow, a diocesan spokeswoman has told The Irish Times.

Her comments follow remarks made by Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin (pictured) this week on Newstalk where he said that many parents didn’t want to divest their Catholic schools to alternative patrons.

Dr Martin acknowledged  that the situation where he was patron of about 90 per cent of all primary schools in the Dublin archdiocese, was “no longer tenable. It doesn’t respect reality.”

He noted that in the 2011 census, 25 per cent of people living in the archdiocese registered as other than Roman Catholic.

In an interview with Pat Kenny he said “the big problem is when you go and do the surveys, parents tend to say, ‘well, we don’t want to divest these schools’.”

A series of surveys conducted by the Department of Education shows very little appetite among parents for a transfer of Catholic schools.

Archbishop Martin said: “Then you have to ask what actually is going on? Are they saying ‘We don’t want change.’? Are they saying ‘well, we don’t know what might come in its place.’? So I think the debate has to go deeper.”

He was “in favour of Catholic schools for Catholic parents” but believed that “until we have valid alternatives on a wide scale across the country that we’re actually weakening the argument for Catholic schools.”

He said communities “should be more radically honest with themselves as to what they want. I don’t want Catholic schools-lite.”

If people wanted “their child to go to a Catholic school because then they can make their First Communion, and then leave, you know, have no more contact with the Church, a lot more debate has to go on.

It was the case that “very often, particularly in the schools, arguments are made which are not really about religion, they’re about a good school . . . And I understand parents want that.”

But, he added, “if people do not move towards a divesting and new arrangements within our communities, then the possibility of maintaining Catholic schools will probably die out.”

If most parents were asked, “they want a good local school . . . I think most people are very happy to have their child go to a local school, and we have extraordinarily good primary schools in the Dublin area,” he said.