A Church of Ireland school will review its requirement that pupils attend the school’s religious ceremonies after a complaint by a secular group. No complaint seems to have come from any parent at the school.

St Andrew’s National School in Lucan, Co Dublin is part of the local church community with strong links to the Parish church in Lucan village.

Its ethos statement notes they teach the Primary curriculum including religious education, which is normal for denominational schools.

“The essentials of the Christian faith are explored and pupils are encouraged to think independently and develop a personal faith by which they may later live”.

It adds: “Pupils are required to participate in all subject areas and attend all school religious ceremonies. As part of the culture of this school children are informed about Santa Claus, Halloween and the expectation that surrounds this. We do not permit any other view within school.”

However, the lobby group Education Equality have taken issue with the requirement, claiming children have a constitutional right to attend publicly-funded schools without attending religious instruction.

In response, Robert Grier, chair of the board of management, said the school noted the concerns raised and will review the Ethos statement.

Lone parents, households with children, single working-age adults and renters are the groups most likely to have an income that does not meet their basic expenditure needs, according to a new study by the ESRI.

Overall, 37pc of lone parent families do not meet their expenditure needs, the highest of any group. Only 9.4pc of household with both parents present and one to four children could not make ends meet. As at 2022, over 16pc of Irish children were growing up in a lone parent household.

The research examined how households’ income compares to an independently determined benchmark of the minimum needed to meet essential expenditures in Ireland.

Overall, the majority of people live in households that meet their expenditure needs. 11% of people do not, with children, renters, lone parents, and single working-age adults being the most affected groups.

School attendance among pupils has dropped significantly since the pandemic as large numbers of children miss classes for extended periods, according to a report from the Department of Education.

Meanwhile, the proportion of children who are “happy with the way they are” has fallen “substantially” since before Covid, from 88.2 per cent to 78.5 per cent, according to a wide-ranging report by the Department of Children.

Just more than 25 per cent of all primary school pupils and 20 per cent of all second-level students missed 20 or more school days in the 2022/2023 school year.

This is up significantly from 11 per cent for primary school pupils prior to the pandemic and 14.5 per cent for students at second level in 2018/2019.

“In the UK, researchers have argued that the pandemic has altered the social contract between schools and society fundamentally, and that one of the most notable casualties of this has been regular school attendance,” the report notes. “These concerns are reflected in Ireland in the most recent data provided by Tusla’s Education Support Service.”

On present trends, only 58 percent of Gen Z women and 56 percent of Gen Z men will ever marry, compared with 77-96 percent of ‘baby boomers’ (born 1946-1964),  62-82 percent of Gen Xers (born 1965-1980) and 56-67 percent of Millennials (born 1981-1996).

Commenting on the results, Research Director, Harry Benson, said it was “a tragedy”.

“There is a great deal of evidence that making decisions and acting upon them – as in the act of marriage – changes the way people see one another for the better.

“Fewer marriages means more family breakdown [because cohabiting couples break up more often than married couples]. We already have the highest level of breakdown in UK recorded history. Nearly half of all children are not living with both natural parents. It’s no coincidence that that this matches the trend away from marriage”, he said.

Last year saw another double-digit increase in Canadian citizens opting to end their lives under the country’s far-reaching euthanasia/assisted suicide law. The figure now stands at over 15,000 as both demand for the procedure and the grounds for accessing it expand. Canada has seen the most rapid growth in euthanasia of any country in the world.

Health Canada’s fifth annual ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ (MAID) report reveals that assisted suicide and euthanasia accounted for nearly 1 in 20 deaths in the country.

Government statistics indicated that 15,343 people were euthanized by medical officials in Canada in 2023, out of a total of just under 20,000 requests. Those numbers represent “an increase of 15.8%” over 2022, the report says, a drop from an average annual growth rate of about 31%.

Though the growth rate declined, it is “not yet possible to make reliable conclusions about whether or not these findings represent a stabilisation of growth rates over the longer term,” the report said.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the American Jewish Committee have published a new version of a glossary of antisemitic rhetoric annotated with the Catholic perspective on each definition.

The move is part of an effort to “continue building bridges and combat antisemitism”.

The USCCB said the resource “paves the way for deeper and wider cooperation in a shared commitment to eradicating antisemitism at a time when recent events have challenged Catholic-Jewish relations.”

Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton noted that the rise of antisemitic incidents both globally and in the United States are a reminder that there is more work to be done.

Former Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has called on the incoming government to investigate the role of the HSE in sending Irish children to the highly controversial Tavistock gender clinic in the UK where they were often given puberty blockers despite the lack of evidence in their favour.

Responding to news that UK authorities have now put an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for under-18s, Flanagan – who is also a former Minister for Children – posted on X: “Investigation in to the role of the @HSELive in the matter of hundreds of Irish children treated at the discredited Tavistock clinic in London needs to be on the agenda of the incoming Irish government.”

Gript previously reported figures released to Independent TD Carol Nolan which revealed that between 2012 and 2022, 129 Irish children were referred to the dosgraced clinic.

The NHS announced in July 2022 that Tavistock – which facilitated ‘gender transition’ therapies for children – would be closed down, after an independent review by Dr. Hilary Cass found the clinic’s approach was unsafe, that it overlooked other mental health problems in children, failed to collect data on the safety of puberty blockers, and did not subject the treatments administered to children to normal quality controls.

The Pope’s ambassador to Syria made an urgent appeal to the international community to lift the sanctions against the country in order to facilitate reconstruction.

In an interview with Vatican News, Cardinal Mario Zenari said that “a problem that has caused so much suffering has been solved. The decisive factor is that it happened without bloodshed”.

“In the first few hours, the rebels sought dialogue with the bishops in Aleppo and promised respect for religious diversity,” said the Apostolic Nuncio, who has been working in Syria since 2008.

“We hope that these promises will be honoured and that the international community will support the peaceful transition.”

According to estimates by religious experts, the proportion of Christians in Syria has recently fallen to less than 2% Before the start of the civil war in 2011, it was still 6%. Many Christians have left the country as a result of the ongoing violence.

UK authorities have introduced an indefinite ban on the use of so-called puberty blockers for under 18s.

The use of the drugs to repress the onset of puberty in children suffering with gender dysphoria has long been an issue of contention with critics arguing that the long term effects of their use is largely unknown.

Now UK health authorities say provisional emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty-suppressing hormones “will be made indefinite following official advice from medical experts”.

“The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children. It recommends indefinite restrictions while work is done to ensure the safety of children and young people,” it said in a statement.

The number of births in the EU fell to 3,665,142 last year, the lowest since at least 1961 despite a much bigger population.

It marks a decline of 5.5pc from 2022, which was also the largest ever annual drop.

The worst affected EU countries suffered double-digit percentage falls in the number of children born, pointing to a growing demographic crisis.

In Romania, births fell by 13.9pc, in Poland 10.7pc and Czechia 10pc. All are at a record low.

Large wealthy European countries like France and Germany are also experiencing steep drops in the number of births, at respectively 6.6pc and 6.2pc.

Societies are ageing across the developed world. Fertility rates, which measure how many children women of childbearing age have on average, fell to a record low in England and Wales last year of 1.44. They are also at record lows in China and the US. The Irish fertility rate is now just 1.5, whereas the replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman.