There was good news from Scotland last week when the Scottish parliament voted by 69 votes to 57 to reject a Bill to legalise assisted suicide. This was not expected when the Bill first reared its head and especially as Scottish politics is dominated by the Scottish National Party, which is roughly equivalent to the...
Having taken part in a fair few of them myself, I am generally drawn to debates between theists and atheists about whether there is a God, or whether we need a God, or whether religion does more harm than good. I mention this because I recently watched Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker debate the proposition...
The other night RTE once again aired its documentary about the Housewife of the Year competition, which was a rather quaint, twee contest that ran from 1967 until 1995. But it was also extremely popular for many years and was in sync with the mores of their time. That, of course, is a big problem...
The Department of Education asked all interested parties to make submissions to a new ‘National Conversation on Education’ launched recently. The ‘conservation’ is described by the Department of Education as a “once in a generation opportunity for children, young people, parents, educators and wider society to help shape Ireland’s education system for decades to come.”...
Why are fertility rates falling so fast in so much of the world at the same time? This is the huge question considered in an extremely important new paper by academics Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine. Perhaps the main cause is the cost of living, or perhaps it is changing social norms. The authors come down...
In Canada in 2024, an astonishing total of 16,499 people died by euthanasia, according to the latest official report. It means the number dying in this way has trebled in just five years. Under Canada’s very liberal ‘assisted dying’ law, a person does not have to be terminally ill to avail of euthanasia. Worryingly, half of...
Marriage is in very poor shape in Britain, a fact very starkly revealed in a new report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The reports points to a long-term and historically unprecedented decline in marriage across the country. In England and Wales, the number of marriages has fallen from 400,000 in 1973 to 224,402...
France has just announced it will be sending a letter to all 29-year-olds outlining their chances of having a child and how the State can provide incentives and assistance to do so. France, like Ireland, has a fertility rate far below replacement level and a rapidly ageing population. David Quinn was on The Hard Shoulder...
New research by the Evangelical Alliance investigates how people in the UK came to Christian faith in adult life. The Finding Jesus report explores those who either converted to Christianity or returned to it after a period of disengagement, across a range of denominations, though most respondents were Protestant. The findings relating to young people aged 18–24...
In 2023, there were 1.26 million more deaths than births in Europe. This downward trend is set to accelerate, despite immigration. A new paper by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies wonders what we can do to arrest, or even simply slow down this devastating trend. This year, the population of the EU is...
