The Budget has been condemned as "unfair" and "anti-poor" by the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI). It also says that the Budget has hindered the social partnership process and will make achievement of a successor to Partnership 2000 more difficult.

The co-director of CORI's Justice Commission, Father Sean Healy, who is one of the "third pillar" representatives in talks on a new national agreement, said yesterday that the Budget was unfair because it sought to discriminate between "the so-called deserving and undeserving poor". The elderly are seen as "deserving" and the unemployed seen as "undeserving".

"It was unfair because those who are already better off gained far more than those who were, and remain, poor," he added.

Father Healy said that the main beneficiaries of the Budget were high-income earners and single people. The £543 million given in tax cuts could have provided everyone in the workforce with a flat rate increase in allowances worth £600 a year. This would have significantly helped low-income groups without hurting the incomes of the higher paid.

CORI produced a detailed critique of the Budget yesterday which criticised the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, for "squandering of resources" that could have been used "to tackle child poverty and childcare, to take everyone on the minimum wage out of the tax net, while still having enough to address disabilities, healthcare, homelessness and adult literacy problems".

It was "an accountant's Budget. It tried to meet the demands of those who see success in budgetary terms as developing a better environment for investment and competitiveness" while remaining "totally blind to the needs of those who are unemployed or have low-paid jobs".