The College of Psychiatrists in Ireland has come out strongly against the proposal to legalise Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (PAS-E). In a new paper released just before Christmas, they say it is “contrary to the efforts of psychiatrists, other mental health staff and the public to prevent deaths by suicide.” It will place vulnerable...
A new ERSI report examines the lives of 20-year-olds in Ireland. Among other things, it finds that about half of them are currently in a romantic relationship and that the vast majority became sexually active from their late teens on. Almost 30pc of girls believe they should have waited longer to have sex for the...
By Mark Hamilton Each Covid variant rings new emergency alarm bells, resulting in parts of society having to retreat again to the bunker. The fear is never ending, as with the climate crisis. Action stations! We have no time to lose. Meanwhile, the principles on which our society are based are being substantially eroded and...
The campaign to legalise assisted suicide in Ireland is gathering pace. As with the abortion referendum, human stories are being used to win the public around to the proposition. This was very much the case on RTE’s Claire Byrne Live last Monday night. The result is that suicide is being normalised. Vulnerable people are being...
To lots of international publicity, a new assisted suicide machine gained legal approval in Switzerland last week called ‘Sarco’, short for sarcophagus. As the name implies, it is a coffin-shaped and sized container that is flooded with nitrogen when activated from inside by the suicidal person, killing them. The development caused remarkably little outrage because...
The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly TD, launched the Review of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy Act) 2018 yesterday at a Meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health. Sadly, this review is about one thing… the extension of abortion. What became clear from the meeting is that the review will be a...
The number of Irish people with disabilities will decline over time, a new report from by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says. This will be due to the general decline in fertility rates, it states. No doubt that will be a big factor, but it leaves out another key element, namely the growing...
In a short address delivered online to a conference in Italy last weekend, David Quinn, head of the Iona Institute discusses the restrictions placed on public worship during the pandemic. He says that the strictness or otherwise of restrictions was often a sign how well respected or not religion is in society. Ireland had the...
Thanks mainly to Covid-19, Ireland saw a huge drop in the number of births in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period last year. At 14.6pc, it was the second biggest fall in Europe, and would have been even worse were it not for the number of non-Irish nationals having babies...
By David Mullins This week the Social Democrats brought forward a Private Members Bill entitled the Education (Health, Relationships and Sex Education) Bill 2021. It has religious-ethos based RSE directly in its sights. Parents would no longer be allowed to withdraw their children from RSE class. The stated aim of the Bill, at least according...
