Gardaí in Kenmare are investigating an incident of criminal damage at a church in the town.

On Sunday morning, parishioners in Kenmare came across disturbing vandalism on the front wall of the church.

Spray painted in black and red is an inverted pentagram, which is a widely recognised Satanic symbol, and some illegible text.

Kenmare Gardaí attended the scene after 12 o’clock mass Sunday and are investigating the circumstances around the incident.

No arrests have been made.

The parish priest in Kenmare has said he is perplexed and upset by an act of vandalism on the local church. Councillor Patrick O Connor said it was shocking to see.

People from across the country have volunteered their services in the clean-up attempt.

The ‘Independent Chair’ of the Three Year Review of the abortion law only had to be “independent of Government, not independent of the issue”, according to Fianna Fail Senator, Lorraine Clifford Lee.

She made her comments in the Seanad yesterday in reply to Senator Rónán Mullen who was challenging the Minister for Health’s decision to abandon the tendering process that was promised in finding an independent  chairperson for the review. In the end, Minister Donnelly bypassed the process and appointed barrister Marie O’Shea as Chair. Since her appointment a fortnight ago, he has repeatedly refused to answer specific questions regarding the appointment, including the fact that Ms O’Shea is known to have engaged in social media activity that appeared to showed a preference for repeal of the 8th Amendment and the legalisation of abortion in Ireland.

A spokesperson for the pro-Life Campaign called the intervention “remarkable and telling”.

“Senator Clifford Lee’s remarks yesterday that the Chair of the review only had to be ‘independent of Government, not independent of the issue’ reveals the crude and blinkered thinking at the heart of the process and the total disregard for objectivity and fairness”.

“Based on all that has happened to date, the credibility of the Three Year Review is quickly evaporating. Stephen Donnelly can keep issuing statements all he likes about his commitment to ensuring an impartial process but unless immediate and verifiable steps are taken to guarantee a truly independent review, the standing of the entire process will soon be shattered beyond repair”.

A man who believes he was born in a mother and baby home has been awarded €225,000 out of the estate of his birth mother, who did not raise him.

In a judgment, Ms Justice Siobhán Stack ruled that the plaintiff had demonstrated, as required by section 117 of the Succession Act, that his mother had failed in her moral duty to make proper provision to him in her will.

The plaintiff’s mother was unmarried when she gave birth to him in a “very different Ireland” in the 1950s, while his father died shortly before his birth.

The man was loved and cared for by the family who raised him, the judge noted. There had been no formal adoption process and the plaintiff was “significantly distressed” by the defendant’s insistence that he supply DNA evidence of his relationship to the deceased, which he did.

Ms Justice Stack accepted his evidence that it was well known in the deceased’s family that he was the woman’s son.

She ruled that the woman ought to have provided for the plaintiff in her will and awarded him a lump sum of €225,000.

A fourth Dutch gynaecologist has been identified as having used his own sperm in fertility treatment during the 1970s and 1980s.

The revelation comes after a third such fertility scandal, which emerged in public only last week, was described as “the tip of the iceberg”.

The latest rogue doctor has been named as Henk Nagel, who fathered at least one child between 1977 and 1985 at the Carolus Hospital fertility clinic in Den Bosch, now part of the Jeroen Bosch hospital group.

The chairman of the hospital board of management, Dr Piet-Hein Buiting, said Dr Nagel’s actions had been “incomprehensible and inadmissible”. He confirmed that an investigation was under way to try to establish whether Dr Nagel might also have fathered a number of other children.

The latest case came to light when a person born as a result of fertility treatment approached the hospital and said he was trying to find his biological father.

DNA tests carried out as a result of that search found “matches with blood relatives of the former gynaecologist” Dr Nagel. The hospital approached Dr Nagel, by then retired, and further tests confirmed he was the person’s father.

The HSE licence for the new National Maternity Hospital (NMH) will include legal measures requiring it to provide all medical procedures allowed under Irish law, including abortion. The hospital has agreed to this anyway, despite being on land gifted to it by the Religious Sisters of Charity.

Critics have said, without evidence, that the nuns would try to stop the new NMH from carrying out abortions.

The revised provisions follow recent Government moves to reopen a draft agreement in which the Elm Park site in south Dublin will come under State control for 299 years after its transfer to the NMH from St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.

The Irish Times has reported that the agreement, which has still to go to Cabinet for approval, will be changed to include specific provisions to reflect the fact that procedures at the new hospital will include “anything permissible within Irish law”.

The text of that agreement between the HSE, the NMH and St Vincent’s would then be incorporated directly into the licence under which the hospital will operate. The talks are well advanced and the parties are working towards a final settlement in coming weeks.

Pope Francis has said that the dying need palliative care, not euthanasia or assisted suicide.

At his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall yesterday, the pope said that this ethical principle was valid not only for Christians but for everyone.

He expressed gratitude for palliative care, which seeks to improve the quality of life of people suffering from severe illnesses.

“However, we must be careful not to confuse this help with unacceptable drifts towards euthanasia,” he said.

“We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate assisted suicide.”

He went on: “I would point out that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritized, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never discarded. Indeed, life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle applies to everyone, not just Christians or believers.”

Catholic bishops across Europe have expressed “deep concern” at French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for abortion to be added to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

In a statement this week, the presidency of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) noted that there is no “right” to abortion enshrined in European or international law.

“Attempting to change this by introducing a supposed right to abortion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union not only goes against fundamental European beliefs and values, but would be an unjust law, devoid of an ethical foundation and destined to be a cause of perpetual conflict among the citizens of the EU,” it said.

Macron told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, on Jan. 19 that the EU rights charter needed to be revised.

“We must update this charter to be more explicit on protection of the environment, the recognition of the right to abortion,” he said.

Mr Justice Colton rejected a challenge by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) to Brandon Lewis’ powers to impose a deadline on Stormont for putting in place a centralised system.

The group claimed that only elected representatives in Northern Ireland should be able to decide on the issue, but the judge disagreed.

“Not only was the secretary of state empowered to make regulations, but he was obliged to do so and remains obliged to do so where it appears to him further changes in the law of Northern Ireland are necessary or appropriate for complying with his duties,” he said. “Only parliament can change this.”

MPs in Westminster passed legislation in 2019 to impose an even more liberal abortion regime on Northern Ireland than exists in England and Wales. This was done while power-sharing at Stormont was going through a long hiatus. But a model for operating a system across Northern Ireland is yet to be put in place.

A Swiss man reportedly exploited a loophole in the country’s new simplified sex-change legislation and registered as a woman so that he could become eligible for a pension a year earlier than it would otherwise be due.

From January 1, a ten-minute-long interview and a payment of 75 Swiss francs (about €71) is enough for a person in Switzerland to change their sex on paper. Such procedures as a physical examination and hormonal testing have been eliminated.

In Lucerne, where the retirement age for men is 65 years, compared to 64 for women, and the pensions are generous, one man decided not to wait another year for the money, by simply going and registering as a female with the authorities.

The sex change only occurred on paper, with the claimant later confirming to family and friends that it was done only to speed up the retirement, according to local media reports.

A family is asking the High Court to declare that the State’s failure to provide retrospective recognition of parentage of children born through commercial surrogacy, a practice banned in almost all European countries, amounts to “invidious discrimination”.

The court heard the biological and legally-recognised father of the young boy is arranging his will after receiving an advanced cancer diagnosis.

The child’s genetic mother is not recognised as his legal mother, because she did not give birth to him, though she is currently the boy’s legal guardian, but that will cease when he turns 18.

The family’s counsel, Mark Lynam BL said the case raises significant constitutional issues regarding people who have engaged in international, commercial surrogacy. The couple used a Ukrainian woman to carry and give birth to their genetic son under a commercial arrangement.

The genetic mother said her family’s situation has now become urgent, as the boy’s “only legal parent is battling a life-threatening illness” and attempts to put together a will that would safeguard his financial future has been “close to impossible”, she added.

Mr Lynam said there is no practical route to legal parentage for the genetic mother, as the Adoption Authority of Ireland does not want to engage in the area until proposed legislation has been passed.