Let’s marry one good idea to the budget and save us all a fortune

IF Charlie McCreevy wants to save us all money — now that we’re back in the land of cutbacks — he could do worse than take the advice of one Ulster Unionist Party official who believes investment in the family is the way to keep society intact, while saving the taxpayer a fortune into the bargain.

Brian Crowe is an ordained Minister of the Church of Ireland, and a policy researcher for the Ulster Unionist Party in Stormont. And in what may well be a first for the Unionist Party, he accepted an invitation to speak to a group of Catholic priests gathered in Lismullin Conference Centre, near Navan, last Monday night.

Crowe, who was speaking in a personal capacity, drew on Catholic and Protestant sources to show how the State "has no responsibility to make theological or confessional judgements" and that any arguments made by the churches on social policy should be based on notions of "the common good."