A LEADING Catholic bishop has strongly urged the Government “to ensure that current levels of child benefit – a vital lifeline for so many families – are maintained in the forthcoming budget”.
Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor said that “reducing crucial supports will drive thousands of children into poverty and place increasing pressure on struggling parents – the long-term costs of such a policy will far outweigh any short-term gains through reduction of the deficit”.
Dr Treanor, the chairman of the Bishops’ Commission for International and Social Affairs, said “our unemployment problem will not be solved by cutting vital supports to those without work, particularly when there is such a serious shortage of available jobs and opportunities for education and training”.
Dr Treanor was speaking on Saturday at the annual joint meeting of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Council for Justice and Peace with the Northern Ireland Catholic Council for Social Affairs at the Ballymascanlon House Hotel near Dundalk, Co Louth.
In attendance was chief constable of the PSNI Matt Baggott and assistant chief constable Will Kerr.
Dr Treanor commended Mr Baggott “for his unapologetic profession of Christian faith as part of the conviction from which his service of society as a police officer derives”.
On the clerical child sexual abuse issue, he said he “would like to acknowledge in particular the profound challenges that confront us as a church as a result of revelations of the abuse of children and the dramatic failure to respond”.
He continued: “Few things could be more inimical to the kingdom of Jesus Christ than the harm of those Jesus himself put before us as ‘the little ones’, those who are most vulnerable among us and often the most trusting of us. Few things deserve more shame than the failure to respond to the abuse of children and the vulnerable among us in an appropriate way,” he said.