The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin has said that, in a Christian country like Ireland, the marginalised and poor should have priority over the GAA when it comes to Budget allocations.
In his Christmas Day address at Christ Church Cathedral, Dr Empey asked what the Celtic Tiger meant to the city's 500 homeless young people. "I wonder how they feel about that £20 million given to one sporting organisation, albeit a very fine one, in the recent Budget. Surely, in a Christian country, the marginalised, the poor, the hungry should have priority?"
He said Ireland, as a society, seemed willing to leave work with such groups to people like Father Peter McVerry and the Simon Community. "If homeless children are to see God's glory, they will see it in the faces of people like Father McVerry."
Speaking in the Pro-Cathedral on Christmas Eve, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Connell, said: "Charity is not a cheap alternative to justice designed to blunt the sharp edges of protest. It works the conversion that enables us to question sincerely how much of the comfort we enjoy is purchased with the burden borne by the poor.
"Responsibility for social justice belongs to the state but, especially in a democracy, the state cannot be simply reduced to those who govern . . . In the final analysis, it is we who lay down the limits that determine what is possible for politicians to achieve."
The plight of refugees was addressed by the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cashel and Ossory, the Right Rev John Neill. He wondered if "we in Ireland are telling ourselves the real Christmas story as we think of the refugees who are at present in our own country".
"I suspect that we do not find it as easy as we imagine to welcome the stranger; the ones who can't speak English, the ones who don't quite look like us. I suspect that the Ireland of the `tiger economy' is a bit like that real and overcrowded Bethlehem of 2000 years ago."
The Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath and Kildare, Dr Richard Clarke, said Ireland had become "a nation of sneering cynics".
"We assume the worst in everybody, whether in public or private life. There is the easy assumption that no-one ever tells the truth as a matter of course . . . no-one does right things for morally right reasons. We call it realism; in fact it is an evil cynicism."