The Cabinet has agreed to hold a referendum on same-sex marriage sometime in the lifetime of the Government. The move comes in the wake of the decision by the Constitutional Convention in April to recommend that the Constitution be amended to allow for same-sex marriage. Minister for Justice Alan Shatter brought a memo to Cabinet...
The Constitutional Convention has recommended removing the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution, and replacing it with a new provision prohibiting incitement to religious hatred against minority groups. They also voted to strengthen existing incitement to hatred legislation. At its meeting at the weekend, 61pc of the Convention’s members voted against keeping the Constitutional provision...
Abortions may have been mistakenly performed on hundreds of healthy babies after an NHS hospital was found to be following “outdated guidelines”. The problem came to light after mum-to-be Emily Wheatley went to the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), in Cardiff, for an ultrasound scan and told her baby was dead and she would need...
The number of British children being brought up by unmarried couples has doubled to almost 2 million since the mid-1990s. New data from the Office for National Statistics dating back to 1996 show that, while the number of married couples bringing up children has dropped by almost 12 per cent to 4.6 million in that...
The number of children in the UK wanting a sex change in 2012 saw an increase of 50 per cent compared to the previous year, according to The Times newspaper. Figures reported in The Times show that last year 208 children were referred to specialist clinics, up from 139 in the previous year. The news...
Ireland’s birthrate has dropped below replacement level, new figures have revealed. The figures, published yesterday in the Central Statistics Office Statistical Yearbook, show that overall, the total fertility rate, the TPFR, which is the number of children born per woman of child-bearing age fell to 2.01 from 2.04 in 2011. This is just below 2.1,...
The Government has postponed a decision on whether to ahead with a same sex marriage referendum until next week to Taoiseach Enda Kenny to consult with Fine Gael backbenchers. The Cabinet took the decision as it has emerged that many Fine Gael TDs are concerned about the political implications of holding such a referendum, the...
Pop stars appearing in highly sexualised videos are a bigger danger to children who use the internet than hard core porn, a child protection expert has told a House of Commons select committee. Jim Gamble, the former head of the government’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and current chair of the safeguarding children board...
The Constitutional Convention is set to consider blasphemy at its next meeting this weekend. The meeting is set to hear from Atheist Ireland, the Humanist Association of Ireland, theologian Professor Patrick Hannon and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. Other contributors are to be confirmed. The Convention will also hear from a number of expert...
A spokesman for Eamon Gilmore has said that legislation allowing adoption by same-sex couples would have to be in place before any referendum on same-sex marriage was held. An equal right to adoption for same-sex couples would mean that children no longer had a preferential right to be raised by a mother and a father...
