THE country's Catholic bishops have repeated their call for a referendum to restore "the constitutional guarantee of the right to life of the unborn child".
In a statement last night, the standing committee of the Bishops Conference also repeated their call for "a meaningful ceasefire by the IRA". Tackling unemployment, they said, had to remain the main priority in economic and social policy. They also expressed concern at the "increased incidence of low pay and poor conditions of work".
As the electorate was being invited "to consider a whole range of issues", the standing committee said it had decided to recall some of the concerns addressed by the bishops over recent years "as a contribution to this process of reflection".
"The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights because it is the foundation of all other rights," they said, and repeated their view that the Supreme Court judgment in the X case gave "the approval of Irish law to the idea that it could be legal to perform an action with the intention of killing another human being". Unless that judgment was overturned, "abortion will remain legal in Ireland under a potentially wide range of circumstances", they stated.
They reaffirmed their conviction that the Irish people should be offered an opportunity, by referendum, to restore by constitutional guarantee "the right to life of the unborn child".
On the North, the bishops said they sensed that a new opportunity to achieve peace had presented itself. A "meaningful ceasefire" by the IRA was essential to any real progress. If and when this was achieved "no time must be lost in moving the process forward", they said.
They repeated their deep concern about the "grave injustice inflicted through the taking of human life" and about other forms of violence in the North, such as "intimidation, so-called punishment beatings, the burning of churches and other buildings".
Lasting peace and reconciliation in the North had to be a concern of everybody on the island, they said,
Addressing the unemployment situation, the standing committee said that "chronic long-term unemployment remains a grave social injustice",
Though there had been "a marked and very welcome improvement in economic conditions", there were still "very high levels of unemployment, especially long-term".
Referring to low pay, the standing committee quoted the argument of the bishops' "Work is the Key" pastoral that "any job is not better than none".
They were concerned, they said, that "the pressure of competition in business, and the numbers seeking work, has resulted in an increased incidence of low pay and poor conditions of work".
In the words of the pastoral, "low pay damages human health and well-being ... every job should be a bulwark against poverty . .. no person's capacity for work should be treated by any employer as undeserving of what is commonly regarded as an acceptable wage".
]
