The PDs should “honour and respect religious practice and conviction”, and be prepared to work with the Churches “as partners in social action”, Tanaiste Michael McDowell has said.

He was speaking at last weekend’s annual conference of the Progressive Democrats and was responding to a talk by David Quinn, the Director of The Iona Institute.

Mr McDowell said: “As liberal republicans we should honour and respect religious practice and conviction. We should deal with the Churches as partners in social action, not as usurpers of some kind of liberal, secular republican view of society.

“In the past there has been a tendency, although not from the PDs, to say either you have dealings with the Churches, in which case you are an old-fashioned, old-Ireland conservative, or you say it’s all private business and has nothing to do with the public domain. We shouldn’t typecast ourselves in this way.”

He added: “In the past there has been something of a Punch and Judy caricature of Church/State relations.”

He agreed with David Quinn’s remarks that “the family, the school and the faith community are important for social cohesion and imparting values.”

He said he did not think this was the job of the State: “I think it is a PD value that the State can’t do everything. The State is not there to hand out ethics. The State is not there to hand out values. It’s not there to run every school. It is the right of people to set up their own schools. It is the right of families to be moral educators.”

Mr McDowell was responding to David Quinn during a question and answer session on Saturday afternoon. The PD conference took place in Wexford.