The Catholic bishops have protested that a new Government document on school planning seems to consign their role, and that of other school patrons, to history.
They have also criticised the Department of Education for failing over the past four years to agree details of a lease for its new national schools to patrons, over 90% of which are Catholic bishops.
The concerns from Maynooth was voiced at the Parnell Summer School in Co Wicklow by Bishop Leo O'Reilly who chairs the hierarchy's Commission on Education.
He welcomed this month's publication by the Departments of Education and the Environment of a Code of Practice on the Provision of Schools and the Planning System as a proactive move to address last autumn's enrolment chaos in some schools.
However, he expressed concern that the Code's only mention of school patrons recalls the termination in 1999 of the tradition of publicly-funded new schools ending up as the property of patrons.
Since then the Department of Education has been leasing new schools to patrons.
The bishop said this seemed to consign the role of patrons in school ownership to history but that he trusted this was not the case.
Dr O'Reilly also complained that the detail of the lease has still not been agreed despite repeated approaches to the Department of Education following the publication, after consultation, of a draft lease agreement in 2004.
