Five senior clergy, all based in north Belfast, warned the next few years will be "troubling" with the Consultative Group on the Past, the Paddy Ashdown report on parading and inquiries from Judge Peter Cory's report into high profile unsolved murders.

And in an attempt to kickstart a debate, the Presbyterian, Methodist, Church of Ireland and Moravian ministers warned of poor inter-community relationships, a slow pace of reconciliation and "fractured" educational provision.

In their article in today's News Letter they said a debate is urgent because "to our dismay" the Executive's programme for government - due to be ratified in the next few weeks - "fails to address the scourges of sectarianism and separation".

Presbyterians, Rev Jack Drennan and Rev Norman Hamilton, Moravian, Rev Paul Holdsworth; Methodist, Rev Ivan McElhinney and Church of Ireland canon, Rev Trevor Williams said while they agreed on the central importance given to growing the economy, the Executive appeared afflicted "with collective amnesia."

The "flagship" policy of recent years, A Shared Future, had disappeared "without comment or explanation" while the emphasis on equality could lead to a "cold house for us all to inhabit - equal in so many ways, yet still living in separate parallel universes.

"We have poor inter-community relationships, effective apartheid in housing across our villages, towns and cities; community division (exemplified in, but not confined to the physical structures of peace walls); slow pace of reconciliation; sectarianism and fractured educational provision," the ministers said.

"Our real angst is that a suggested programme for government almost totally fails to acknowledge these profoundly difficult issues exist."