Were nuns paid by the state?

Auds brings up something that I've been wondering about in her post on Liz O'Donnell's ravings. Were the priests, sisters and brothers who built and ran Ireland's primary education system remunerated for their efforts at the same level as were lay teachers? I don't know this answer. I always assumed that the state paid the wages due to members of religious orders directly to the orders.

By the way, I love this bit from Auds about Liz O'Donnell:

Get over it, honey - you can't be a priest in the RCC but rest assured, you're a fully signed up priestess of the new Irish secularism, armed with a Fendi crozier, an Irish Times Bible and enough bile to obliterate any pretensions of a pluralistic respect toward what is simultaneously believed to be a greying impotent force of irrelevancy and a powerful enforcer of a "rigid right wing morality".

I don't even know what 'Fendi' is, but I know when I find out I'm going to like this even more.