Freedoms of religion, conscience and speech were discussed at an important conferences held in London recently. ‘Enemies of the State: Religious Freedom and the New Repression’, was held at Conway Hall, home to an important archive on humanism. It was co-hosted by Spiked and by ADF International. Spiked is a Marxist leaning online journal. Its editor,...
Good afternoon Ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk to you about two things this afternoon. First, I want to address the question that is often posed in relation to this Assembly. Why shouldn’t we simply have a vote on this issue? Why shouldn’t we leave it to the majority to decide? I want to...
‘Fact Check’ at TheJournal.ie has ‘fact checked’ something Maria Steen of The Iona Institute said on Claire Byrne Live a fortnight ago about diversity in multi-denominational schools and found it to be ‘mostly false’. It is this statement that is actually false. Maria was very specific in what she said and everything she said stands...
The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute was invited last month to address the Citizens’ Assembly and give delegates some facts and figures about abortion. In my previous blog post, I have showed how it very mistakenly told delegates that married women are more likely to have abortions. In this post I will look at the claim that...
Two very questionable claims were made by one of the experts invited to address the Citizens’ Assembly last month. One is that married women have an abortion rate higher than unmarried women, and the second is that countries with highly restrictive abortion laws tend to have higher abortion rates than countries with more permissive laws....
Maria Steen of The Iona Institute appeared on TV3’s Tonight with Pat Kenny last night. The subject was the pro-life amendment to the Irish Constitution. Should we retain it or repeal it? Maria argued in favour of retention and said that if we repeal it, it will be the first time ever we have voted to...
Iona Institute Director, David Quinn, appeared on The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk yesterday. He and Senator Gerard Craughwell debated whether or not the Good Friday ban on alcohol sales should be lifted. David argued that in many European countries there are customs and laws that place restrictions on various forming of trading, especially Sunday...
The 8th amendment has saved thousands of lives, particularly of those who are disabled. Let’s consider the specific case of babies with Down Syndrome, also known as trisomy 21. In England and Wales ninety percent of those who are diagnosed before birth with Down Syndrome are aborted and there is a growing concern that these appalling...
Maria Steen of The Iona Institute was on RTE’s Claire Byrne Live last night to debate whether or not denominational schools should be allowed to select pupils on the basis of the religion of the school when there are too many applications for the number of available places at the school. The debate can be...
The Vintners’ group and the restaurateurs are campaigning once again to bring an end to the ban on selling alcohol on Good Friday. ‘It’s archaic’, they say. ‘It upsets the tourists’. They even claim (wrongly) that the Vatican sells alcohol on Good Friday. In this briefing note we deal with their arguments one by one. We...
