Religious discourse is being offered some protection under the new Hate Crimes legislation published last week.

An earlier version of the bill had offered no exemption to religious speech, but did protect other categories of speech such as artistic or political expression.

The Heads of the Bill published last year would have established a criminal offence for speech with the purpose of “inciting hatred”, or being “reckless” as to whether such speech would incite hatred, of people due to some protected characteristic such as race or sexuality.

It was also proposed that an acceptable defence against prosecution would be if the offending material consisted solely of “a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic discourse”.

The full text of the bill now says it shall be a defence to prove that the offending material consisted solely of “a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse”.

In a statement, Atheist Ireland said they strongly disagree with what they called “the harmful Catholic beliefs” expressed by Fr Sean Sheehy, but added that they “also support his right to preach such harmful Catholic beliefs to people who attend Catholic Mass”.

They noted that Bishop Ray Browne of Kerry has apologised for the homily, saying it does not reflect the Christian position Christian teaching.

“But Bishop Browne is wrong to say the homily does not reflect Catholic teaching on abortion, gender theory, and homosexuality. The homily reflects the positions taken on these issues by Pope Francis and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, they say.

“Father Sheehy’s problem is not that he is mistaken about Catholic Church teaching. It is that he is too honest about it, and his honesty has upset his Bishop and some of his congregation”.

“Significant improvements” are needed to new legislation on hate speech to avoid a situation where the courts struggle to interpret the law, according to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL).

The ICCL also suggested that the Government is “steamrolling” the complex legislation through the Oireachtas and this is “risking bad law”.

Spokesperson, Doireann Ansbro, decried the loose definition of hatred. The Bill says “‘hatred’ means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics”. However, Ms Ansbro said this amounts to a definition of “hatred is hatred”.

She added that the ICCL is concerned that the courts “will struggle to interpret what hatred is and therefore people who potentially should be convicted won’t be convicted”.

She also raised concern about freedom of expression and said ICCL would like to see an explicit reference to protections under the European declarations on rights as well as the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.

She cited one European court case involving the right to shock, offend and disturb and said: “We have to be clear that we’re not criminalising offensive language and we’re not protecting people from being offended.”

The Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy has criticised opposition from Fine Gael to the removal of live farm animals from a Christmas nativity crib outside the Mansion House as an “opportunistic political attack”. However, she confirmed that the crib itself will not be gotten rid of.

Ms Conroy, a Green Party councillor, said the experience offered to parents and children at the crib in Dublin city centre had been “underwhelming” in recent years.

“People enter what is effectively a shed at one end and passively view some farm animals for a few minutes, lately behind a perspex screen, before exiting the other side,” she told a meeting of Dublin City Council (DCC) on Monday.

The Lord Mayor said she had decided there was a need for a “significant revamp”, which included removing the live animals from the crib display.

The councillor told the meeting instead a winter wonderland-style experience would be set up, with sleighs and Christmas-themed post boxes where children could pose for photographs.

A prominent cleric said he had been left “speechless’’ over the Bishop of Kerry’s attacks on remarks delivered in a recent sermon in Listowel.

Fr Paddy McCafferty, parish priest at Corpus Christi, in Ballymurphy, West Belfast, said his clerical colleague, Fr Sean Sheehy, was “only saying what the Church teaches.”

Referring to Bishop Ray Brown’s subsequent statement, he said “It is utter nonsense”, adding, “shock horror priest teaches what the church stands for.”

In footage shared on social media Fr Sheehy (80) told the congregation: “You rarely hear about sin, but it’s rampant, it’s rampant. We see it for example, in legislation.

“We see it in the promotion of abortion, we see it and in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism and in the promotion of sex between two men and two women.

His remarks prompted dozens of members of the congregation to get up and leave and resulted in Bishop Browne’s apology.

He said Fr Sheehy’s remarks “do not represent the Christian position.”

A last effort to save the traditional live-animal crib outside Dublin’s Mansion House will be made at a meeting of Dublin City Council tonight.

Lord Mayor Caroline Conroy of the Green Party last month announced the crib, which has been erected at Christmas outside the Manion House on Dawson Street since 1995, would be stood down this year.

Ms Conroy, a Green Party councillor said she intended to introduce a more “inclusive” winter wonderland-style experience, with choirs, sleighs and post boxes at the Mansion House in place of the nativity with live animals.

Her decision has drawn criticism from politicians from a number of parties as well as the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The Government faced strong opposition from members of the public over plans to expand ‘hate’ crime and ‘hate’ speech laws, newly released documents show.

More than 3,600 submissions by letter or online from the public, elected representatives, political parties and academics were received ahead of Ministers last week approving a Bill intended to make prosecutions for hate speech and hate crimes easier.

People complained that the plans were an “interference” in freedom-of-speech entitlements, represented a “grave threat” to democracy and could be considered “Orwellian”.

The Department of Justice received 3,526 online survey responses, with a number stating that there should be “no limit” on free speech.

While the public were mostly against the proposals, the majority of submissions from politicians and academics agreed with the proposed new law.

The Foreign Minister of Germany, Annaleena Baerbock, has apologised for the removal of a historic crucifix from the venue of a meeting of G7 leaders.

The ‘Peace Hall’ in Münster is where a treaty marking the end of the Thirty Years war had been signed.

Ironically, Ms Baerbock chose the venue for its historic symbolism: “The Peace of Westphalia is a cradle of modern international law; it is where fundamental concepts such as the equality and sovereignty of states were negotiated for the very first time in a large peace agreement. We must preserve this heritage. That is why, in these difficult times, I very consciously chose this symbolic location for our meeting”.

According to the city of Münster, employees of the foreign office asked for the cross to be removed because people with different religious backgrounds were taking part in the G-7 meeting.

Faith leaders and opposition politicians had sharply criticised the move. The chairwoman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Annette Kurschus, called the step “completely incomprehensible, even verging on the grotesque”.

“The religious war was ended under this cross in the Friedenssaal in Münster and Europe was pacified with it,” says the theologian, who is also president of the Westphalian state church. The diocese of Münster also called the measure “incomprehensible” while the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, Aiman ​​Mazyek, also expressed his puzzlement.

On Friday, Ms Baerbock issued an apology. “I’m very sorry,” she said, “The cross is part of the history of this place. I would have liked it if we hadn’t put it away.”

An Irish man whose surrogate triplets were detained in Kenya for two months has secured their release after paying almost €40,000 extra to a surrogacy agency on top of the originally agreed price of €50,000 for the surrogacy process. Commercial surrogacy is not allowed in most countries.

Mr O’Reilly and his partner were hit with additional costs when they went to collect the infants in Kenya in the days after their birth.

The partners, who did not have the funds, launched a high-profile public campaign to raise the money, with the public donating more than €36,000 to a gofundme campaign while Mr O’Reilly had to borrow another €2,900 from family.

He explained that his solicitor transferred some of the money to the surrogacy agency, but he also had to “hand over €20,000 cash” when he landed in Kenya.

“We had to pay them off, give cash to doctors and others, just to get our girls. It was the only way. The feeling to now have them home, it is unbelievable.”

Mr O’Reilly called for the Government to intervene to legislate for commercial surrogacy in Ireland.

“We are not the first couple for this to happen to and we won’t be the last,” he said.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the rights of a 20-year-old woman were violated when her parents forced her to have an abortion in 2010.

In the case S.F.K. v Russia, the court found that the forced abortion was “an egregious form of inhuman and degrading treatment which had not only resulted in a serious immediate damage to her health – that is the loss of her unborn child – but had also entailed long-lasting negative physical and psychological effects.”

The abortion was carried out in a public hospital despite the woman continuing to make clear to her parents and medical personnel that she wished to keep her baby. At the time, the police did not prosecute the parents because they determined that they were acting in their daughter’s best interest.

Commenting on the case, a spokesperson for the Pro-Life Campaign said the case “highlights the rarely talked about fact — that studies show that a significant number of all abortions performed are carried out against the wishes of the woman”.