The leaders of the four biggest churches in Ireland have issued a joint statement in support of the Stormont deal, which was made yesterday.

The heads of the Catholic Church, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and the Methodist Church all put their names to a statement in support of the deal, which hopes to salvage Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration.

The deal, which took ten weeks of talks to form, was prompted by the coalition Executive's near collapse after a range of disputes including the fallout from a murder linked to the IRA and an acute budgetary crisis.

In it, they said: "We recognise that everyone involved in the negotiations will not have achieved all that they wanted in this agreement, nor will everyone who reads it be fully content with every aspect of it. Such is the nature of any agreed accommodation.

"However, we pray that this particular accommodation reached in the interests of all, will be the basis for beginning to restore hope to those who are struggling and re-establish the trust that has been slowly ebbing from our political institutions."

The new deal, which is almost 70 pages long, resolves the budgetary crisis which was caused by the long-term failure to adopt welfare changes.

However, it failed to secure a solution regarding the issues that have arisen from the Northern Ireland troubles.

David Cameron has said the Stormont deal was "an important turning point for Northern Ireland."

It is also backed by the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin, but the executive's Justice Minister David Ford, who leads the Alliance Party, has said his party refused to support it.

Victims' groups have said they are disappointed there is no movement on the legacy issues of the Troubles.