The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin has said it was unfair to have a "one size fits all" rule in relation to the number of people who can attend church.
Religious buildings and places of worship are among the places which are allowed to reopen on June 29th under plans announced by the Government on Friday. But the guidelines also limit indoor gatherings to 50 people.
Some churches in the diocese of Dublin are so small that they would not 50 people while others could fit 1,500, Dr Martin told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland.
“We’ve worked very hard to prepare churches - to put signage, to arrange stewarding, to ensure there is very little interaction and if you’ve got a church with 1,500 people and only 50 people are allowed to enter, it is surprising.
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“We have to find a way in which you have some relationship between the size of the church and the number of people who will come. Now, I’m not advocating huge numbers, I believe, particularly in the early period, the next three weeks, we should allow this time to settle in so that we can be comfortable with how these are managed,” he said.
“But I do believe that compared to other situations and what you see, for example, retail outlets brimming with people, that this is unfair also to the extraordinary effort that has been put in by priests and people in preparing churches.
“All I can see is we need to find some sort of way there can be some proportion to the size of the church - I would be against very large gatherings.
“Believers have been very, very patient over the last few months. People have a right to be able to attend worship,” Dr Martin said.
The archbishop said he thought there was room to be flexible, especially with very large churches.
David Pierrepoint, Church of Ireland archdeacon of Dublin agreed with Dr Martin, pointing out that with some large churches, like Christchurch Cathedral it would be unfair to make "someone at the door with a clicker machine" telling people they could not enter once the figure of 50 had been reached.