Health workers in a seaside resort where dozens of young girls were sexually exploited were more focused on handing out contraception than spotting the signs of abuse, a report says. As many as 40 vulnerable girls as young as 13 were victims of sexual exploitation by a group of men in the Torbay area of...
Irish courts “can never sanction any step to terminate a life”, the Supreme Court was told yesterday. Lawyers for the State said that the policy of the law which decriminalised suicide in 1993 was adverse to all suicide, the Irish Independent reports. Asked by Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman if the consequence of that position...
There has been a fall in the birth rate, according to new figures from the CSO. The Vital Statistics report for the third quarter of 2012 showed that the number of births declined compared to the number of births from the corresponding quarter of 2011. There were 17,985 live births in the third quarter of...
The court wants to use the case of MS sufferer Marie Fleming to make it harder for others to avail of assisted suicide, a lawyer representing Ms Fleming has argued. Ms Fleming, a former academic, wants her long term partner Tom Curran to be able to assist her in taking her own life without him...
A number of vulnerable children who were placed in foster families which were later found to be unsafe have been moved to alternative state accommodation. Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald (pictured) said yesterday that the children had been removed from the families in north west Dublin after inspectors found serious allegations had been made against some...
The number of women engaged in ‘home duties’ has fallen by a massive 30,000 in just one year according to the latest Quarterly National Household Survey from the CSO. The number of women working in the home in the fourth quarter of 2012 stood at 491,000 down from 521,000 in the final quarter of 2011....
The head of the Sexual Health Centre (SHC) in Cork has said that take-up of its sex education programmes by schools in the area is “patchy” and called for the State to rigorously monitor schools on the issue. Deirdre Seery, CEO of the SHC, said the centre was involved in Transition Year and fifth and...
The Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal against a ruling by the High Court in January which upheld Ireland’s ban on assisted suicide. Marie Fleming, who lost the case, argued that the ban infringed her personal autonomy and equality rights under the Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights, the Irish Times reports....
Australian law permitting only opposite-sex marriage does not amount to gender discrimination, a federal court judge in Sydney has ruled. Justice Jayne Jagot said that neither gay men nor women are allowed to marry under the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 and thus both sexes are treated equally to that extent. “A man cannot enter...
A French branch of Subway, the fast-food retailer, has been forced to shut after it advertised a Valentine’s Day deal that did not include gay couples. The store, which offered a discounted meal specifically for male/female couples, said it was exercising “freedom of expression,” the Huffington Post reports. Same-sex marriage was approved by the National...
