Bishop Leo O'Reilly, Chair of the Church's education commission said: ''if people are expressing concerns from the point of view of child protection, there's no basis for that, given the fact that the safeguarding of children in schools is subject to the State's own guidelines.
''Church guidelines don't come into play in the schools at all, it's the responsibility of the State'', Dr O'Reilly said.
''It's quite opportunistic really,'' he said.
''I don't think it's about safeguarding children on the part of most of the people making these calls, I think maybe there's another agenda.
Church's position
''The Church's position is fairly clear, we have a big responsibility in the area of education, we take it seriously, it is our policy to provide Catholic schools for parents who want their children to have a Catholic education''.
Bishop O'Reilly also corrected a claim by Labour party Education spokesman Ruairí Quinn that religious orders operated around 1,000 primary schools in the State.
''That is completely false,'' he said, ''the number is in fact around 300, nowhere near 1,000.''
A spokesman for Mr Quinn stated the figure of 1,000 was never meant to be definitive and insisted that ''Deputy Quinn was raising the wider question about the Church's continued involvement in education to such a large extent''.
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