Religious education will continue to have a central role to play in Irish schools in the future, according to the Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn.
And he criticised the fact that religious faith in modern Ireland is treated with ''a level of derision and contempt that it does not deserve,'' according to an Irish Catholic report.
The Minister was speaking at a conference at the Irish Centre for Religious Education (ICRE)
at the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin.
The meeting was focused on finding mutual ground on the debate about religious education and diversity in the provision of schooling.
While Mr Quinn described himself as a ''practising atheist,’’ he said that he has had, ''an abiding interest in religion for all of my adult life.’’
Mr Quinn said, ''Modern discourse about religion does no service to what is actually happening in the sphere of religious education'' in Ireland where, he said, teachers are opening up very important debates around religion to young people. And he told delegates at the conference that ''religious education will have an important place in the future of education in Ireland.”
''Religious education is part of a vital set of tools that people need if they are to be active citizens and they are to make informed choices about issues,'' he said.
Mr Quinn also criticised what he believed was a ''failure by many Irish people'' to take their faith seriously.
''We are all born into a belief system … but it is as adults that we have to take responsibility and ownership for that. If more people took that seriously we might not be in the economic mess in which we now find ourselves,'' he said.
Earlier this year, the Minister questioned the amount of time schools spend preparing children for the sacraments.
In April, he said he would prefer schools to spend time on reading and maths skills rather than preparing pupils for First Communion and Confirmation.
Referring to a severe decline in performance by Irish 15-year-olds in the international OECD/PISA league table on literacy published last year, he said that the curriculum was overloaded.
His remarks were criticised by former Taoiseach John Bruton, who rejected the notion that religious education was responsible for the decline in literacy standards.
Mr Bruton said, “As far as I know, that 30 minutes per day has not increased over the period since the earlier tests in which Ireland obtained a creditable 5th place. So why single out religious formation? Why does the Minister not, for example, refer to the teaching of second language, Irish in most cases, on which I believe 120 minutes per day is spent?”