Dr Edward Walsh, president emeritus of the University of Limerick, has distanced himself from comments by an Irish Times columnist, Kevin Myers, regarding lone parents.
Dr Walsh sparked debate on the issue in a lecture last week when he said the welfare system may be actively encouraging the formation of lone-parent families.
Yesterday, Dr Walsh said Myers's choice of words had disrupted a mature and civilised discussion on the issue.
"The language was mischievous and most unhelpful and introduced all sorts of emotion into an area where prudent people would speak sensitively and carefully," Dr Walsh said.
Myers, in his Irishman's Diary in Tuesday's Irish Times, referred to unmarried women with children as "mothers of bastards" and said State benefits were creating "benefits-addicted, fatherless families".
A number of lone-parent groups, political parties and trade unions reacted angrily to Myers's comments and called for a public apology.
One Family, a single-parents group, called for the immediate withdrawal of "derogatory language and factual inaccuracies" in the article.
"This debate has today reached an all-time low with the use of language which we had hoped was gone from reasonable dialogue in Irish society," said the organisation's director, Ms Karen Kiernan.
"It is tragic that certain children are picked on and singled out for attack on this occasion," she added.
The remarks were also criticised by Mr John Molloy, director of care with Home Again, a charity caring for troubled boys who cannot live at home. He said the labelling of the children as "bastards" was offensive and outrageous.
The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said the use of "hate words" was damaging to an often vulnerable group of parents. "Hate words can be the most damaging to people ... It's use of language which doesn't respect the dignity of everybody or anybody," he told RTÉ's The Big Bite.
"Lone parents are a very significant group. They go through a huge amount of suffering by wanting to be genuinely good parents and give their children as much as any other child can get and even better if they could."
Mr David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and a trustee of the Irish Times Trust, said the matter would be raised at the next meeting of the trust.
"It was a legitimate social policy issue to discuss, but there has to be some constraint on language used. If Mr Myers had used that language in relation to an ethnic group, it might be illegal," Mr Begg said.
Mr Séamus Dooley, the Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said the comments were inappropriate and called for an apology from The Irish Times and Myers.
However, he said it would be wrong to judge the record of the newspaper on the basis of a single "editorial mistake". "By his extreme reaction, Kevin Myers has probably stifled debate, because by his use of intemperate and inappropriate language he has turned this into a debate about Kevin Myers, rather than the issue itself," Mr Dooley said.
The editorial committee of The Irish Times, a group elected by journalistic staff in the newspaper, passed a resolution reminding staff of the NUJ's code of conduct. "The editorial committee is committed to freedom of speech, and to the promotion of robust debate and the expression of diversity of opinion in The Irish Times. However, we consider the above can be achieved through adherence to the NUJ's code of conduct and without recourse to gratuitous abuse."
The Green Party yesterday called on The Irish Times to apologise and said the use of the word "bastard" had reached a new low for Myers and the newspaper.
"The decision to publish the article on a day when a supplement on trees, which meant the edition would be circulated to classrooms across the country, was foolish, offensive and ill-advised," the party said.
