THE CHURCH of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin has strongly urged the Government not to cut services for children with special needs in the budget.
Dr John Neill made the plea during his final presidential address to the Dublin and Glendalough diocesan synod yesterday. Dr Neill is to step down in January after eight years as archbishop.
Dr Neill accepted that cuts were “an economic fact”. He urged the Government not to cut the provision for children with special needs “which is already seriously undermined by existing cuts”.
“A society is surely judged not by its wealth or by its poverty, but by its care of the most vulnerable, the young and the old, and especially those with special needs,” he said,
Dr Neill also spoke of his “major concerns” about the worsening problems in education and healthcare since he became archbishop eight years ago.
There was constant sniping by politicians and the Health Service Executive at medical practitioners and “a total failure to address the wasteful bureaucracy of the system and the outrageous salaries and bonuses paid to bureaucrats”, he said.
Speaking of his church’s relationship with the Catholic Church he praised the “real friendship” of Dublin Catholic archbishop Diarmuid Martin.
He described relationships with the church at an international level as having gone “seriously backwards”.
He appealed to Catholic laity, priests and bishops with an ecumenical commitment to “make their voices heard more clearly and at the highest possible level”.
The media was becoming “increasingly the power in the land” and was filling a void left by the crisis of confidence in the Catholic Church, he said.
He spoke of the wider impact of the economic downturn on Irish society. The “agony of the financial collapse and banking crisis” was reaching into every part of Irish life, he said.
The sense of security and certainty were “gone from the lives of most people” and corruption and dishonesty in the financial world had “undermined any remaining sense of confidence”.
“What must be avoided at all costs is a sense of despair growing and spreading in Irish society” he said.
Dr Neill described the “serious sense of disillusionment” with politics. “There are seldom resignations when corruption is exposed unless such are forced for purely political reasons,” he said.
This disillusionment would increase in the next general election if parties indicated in advance that certain alliances were out of the question “and then rush headlong into alliances because of the prospect of power”, he said.
“People are entitled to know what they are voting for,” he added.
On the impact of Government cuts on Protestant schools he said that “major changes had been implemented without consultation” and there was a “sense of alienation beginning to grow”.
“I am aware that this dialogue is now taking place, but much damage has already been done to the future of several schools,” he said.
