Sarah Benson, advocacy officer with the Children's Rights Alliance of Ireland, believes that citizens have a duty under the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child to protect children from advertisements that may hinder their development.
But when parents voice their concerns, they are objecting to commercial companies that are increasingly sophisticated in their marketing techniques, who employ psychologists to devise their advertising messages and pop stars to sell their products.
"It is impossible to combat the messages of heavily-financed companies who throw billions into their sponsorships, whereas the Government can only spend small amounts of money on promoting healthy food options. The simple fact is that you aren't going to get Britney Spears to chomp into a banana sponsored by the Irish Government," says Benson.
However, suggestions by members of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Education that schools are receiving an unprecedented amount of unsolicited mail and are increasingly targeted by commercial companies is rejected by marketers such as Jarlath Jennings, marketing director with O'Connells.
Others, however, see it differently. The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) has recently submitted two letters to the Department of Education seeking an urgent meeting on the subject of commercialism in schools. To date, they have received no satisfactory response to their proposal to draw up a national framework.
While school-based advertising has been banned in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Vietnam, Ireland seems unlikely to follow the same course.
Campaign groups say that if sponsorship is to take place, it should be done without reference to logos or brands. Parents' representative bodies state that it is the responsibility of each individual school to produce a policy, while consumer groups are calling for a ban.
Dermot Jewell, chief executive of the Consumers' Association of Ireland (CAI), says products offered for "free" as a goodwill gesture have eliminated the consumer's right to choice and that the only realistic solution is a ban on commercial advertising in schools.
"If we are to ban marketing and funding, then schools need to be more transparent about their funding and parents have to face the fact that they will have to pay more money . . . it's a struggle but a necessary struggle," he says.
The danger, of course, is that as official Department of Education funding remains inadequate, schools will increasingly turn to the commercial world in order to survive.