A Catholic bishop in Northern Ireland has criticised laws which enforce “prejudice and discrimination” against people of faith.

Speaking before legislators at the North’s Assembly earlier this week ahead of the introduction of a proposed Freedom of Conscience Bill, Bishop Noel Treanor of the Diocese of Down and Connor said that current laws, such as equality legislation which omits a conscience clause, requires people of faith to act against their consciences in ways that simply would not be tolerated by other sectors of society.

“It is important that our politicians accept there is a real problem here that needs to be addressed,” Bishop Treanor said. “Our laws as they stand are having an unjust and disproporionate impact on those of religious faith.”

The bishop’s comments came in the wake of the closure of a Catholic adoption agency for its refusal to bend on Church teaching that marriage is that between a man and a woman, and legal cases such as that levelled by the Equality Commission against a Christian bakery, Ashers, for its refusal to bake a cake with a message supporting same-sex marriage.

“Is it acceptable in a genuinely just, tolerant and pluralist society that one group are threatened with fines, imprisonment, losing their business or job, or in the case of the Catholic Church, losing public funding for long established adoption agencies and other charitable services that we provide in the name of providing equality for another group? It is as if we have swapped one form of discrimination for another.”

Urging legislators to find “more just and reasonable accommodatuon for relgious belief” where such issues of conscience arise, Bishop Treanor said: “The truth is that such prejudice and discrimination against any other category of people in our society would not be tolerated and public representatives have a responsibility to ensure that discrimination against those with perfectly rational religious views will not be tolerated either.