IRELAND’S FOUR main church leaders are travelling to London this morning to express their “grave concern” about the likely impact of proposed welfare reforms on Northern Ireland.
The Catholic Primate, Cardinal Seán Brady; the Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Alan Harper; the Presbyterian Moderator, Rev Dr Ivan Patterson; and the President of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Rev Ian Henderson, will have a private meeting with minister for welfare reform Lord David Freud, who will be accompanied by Northern Secretary Owen Paterson.
The proposed welfare reforms have been described as the most radical in the UK for over 40 years.
It has been estimated that the loss to benefit recipients in Northern Ireland following such reforms would be more than £600 million (€702 million) per year by 2014-15, making it one of the hardest hit regions of the UK under the proposed reforms.
The Welfare Reform Bill is currently passing through Westminster and will be debated in the House of Lords today. It is likely it will receive royal assent early next year. Corresponding provisions will be incorporated in a Northern Ireland Welfare Reform Bill to be introduced in the Stormont Assembly next month.
After their meeting with Lord Freud and Mr Paterson this morning the church leaders will go to Westminster where they will meet MPs and members of the House of Lords as they debate the Bill as it passes its final stages.
Cardinal Brady said: “The terrible reality is that all traditions in Northern Ireland share some of the highest levels of child poverty, fuel poverty, disability and unemployment levels on these islands.
“Today we are taking a united stand as church leaders to say, ‘give us a shared future which is a better future, not one that pushes Northern Ireland further back as the most impoverished region of the UK’.”
Archbishop Harper said the fact that “all four leaders of the largest churches in Ireland have set aside time before Christmas to travel together to London to make this approach to Lord Freud and his colleagues is a sign of just how concerned we are”.
Successive studies showed “that Northern Ireland will suffer more than any other region of the UK from the reforms to social welfare being debated in Westminster today”, he said.
Rev Dr Patterson said: “We want to support our local politicians in making government in Westminster aware of the grave consequences of these reforms for the economy in Northern Ireland.”
They also wanted to ask: “What is the moral imperative guiding these reforms? When such efforts were made to save our financial institutions, what efforts are being made to protect the poorest among us?”
Rev Henderson said: “Northern Ireland has some of the highest levels of childhood poverty in Europe and twice that of any other part of the UK.”
What was proposed was “simply unacceptable in any decent, developed society”.