Sinn Féin’s ruling body will have to call a special conference to determine the party’s position on future referendums in the wake of its support for the failed family and care votes earlier this year.

Delegates at the party’s ardfheis in Athlone raised concerns over how the party came to support the Government in the contentious referendums that were heavily defeated.

Sinn Féin TD Martin Browne said: “We got a call on the referendum wrong” and he said the party’s decision to back a Yes-Yes vote was “taken without adequate consultation with the members and members felt that their views weren’t taken on board”.

Dublin West TD Paul Donnelly also spoke in favour of an ardfheis motion calling on the party’s ard comhairle to hold a special delegate conference to determine Sinn Féin’s position on any future constitutional referendums.

He said the party’s “core principle is the voice of the membership” and he argued that “we give that voice back to the membership.”

The motion was passed by delegates.

The scaled down version of the Hate Crime Bill still has controversial elements that would introduce radical notions of gender into Irish law, according to two independent Senators.

Speaking to the Irish Times, Senator Michael McDowell said: “The Bill suggests that there are genders (plural) other than male or female”, though it does not enumerate what those might be.

Mr McDowell said that even the Gender Recognition Act, which allows people to legally change their gender, recognised only two genders, male and female.

A provision that recognises additional genders would raise questions “over statutory provisions providing for gender balance in judicial appointments, board compositions, etc”.

“There is no case for legislating for an open-ended multiplicity of subjective genders the meaning of which is obscure,” he said.

Meanwhile, speaking to the Irish Catholic, Senator Ronan Mullen said the Government’s amended plan is still problematic because that it uses a notion of gender “that’s from an NGO, that’s full of ideology and denies the basic realities of the gender of male and female. It would be more than nonsense to put that into law in any shape or form – harmful nonsense”.

The birth rate in Canada reached an all time low of 1.26 children per woman last year, according to new data from the country’s office for vital statistics.

A total fertility rate of 2.1 is considered the minimum for a population to sustain itself.

Canada’s rate has been generally declining for over 15 years and has now joined the group of “lowest-low” fertility countries, including South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan, with 1.3 children per woman or less.

In comparison, the total fertility rate for the United States was 1.62 per woman in 2023.

A record-low was registered in 10 of the 13 provinces and territories, with the lowest fertility rate in British Columbia at 1.00 child per woman.

Delaware Gov. John Carney has vetoed a bill aimed at making assisted suicide available in the state.

Delaware is a reliably Democrat state which President Joe Biden represented for decades.

“Although I understand not everyone shares my views, I am fundamentally and morally opposed to state law enabling someone, even under tragic and painful circumstances, to take their own life,” Carney, a Democrat, said in a statement.

“Last year, the American Medical Association reaffirmed its view that physician-assisted suicide is ‘fundamentally incompatible with a physician’s role as healer.’”

House Bill 140 would have allowed terminally ill Delaware residents to end their own lives with the help of a medical professional.

A similar proposal was defeated in the neighbouring Democrat-controlled state of Maryland earlier this year. Other Democrat-run states such as California and Oregon permit assisted suicide.

A mother of four has been sentenced to death in Pakistan for sharing allegedly blasphemous messages on WhatsApp.

Legal advocates, supported by the leading Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), have vowed to appeal the conviction.

Former nurse Shagufta Kiran, 40, received the death sentence on 18 September from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) court in Islamabad. She was also fined 300,000 Pakistani Rupees (more than €960).

The sentencing came more than three years after FIA representatives stormed her home in Rawalpindi and arrested her, acting on a complaint that alleged she had shared comments in a WhatsApp discussion group that were disrespectful to Islam’s Prophet Mohammad.

Surrogacy is one of the most concerning, novel and emerging forms of human trafficking, according to a scathing new report from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.

The Government recently passed one of the most permissive surrogacy laws in Europe which recognises surrogacy contracts entered into overseas, which cost tens of thousands of euro, and which critics have called ‘baby-buying‘.

The report, ‘Trafficking in Human Beings in Ireland’, from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) examines all forms of human trafficking and the State’s actions to combat it.

Its third chapter examines “Exploitative Surrogacy” as a new form of trafficking, recently condemned by a legally enforceable EU Directive.

Regarding the Irish legislation, the Commission expressed concern that provisions relating to international surrogacy “may not have been sufficiently examined against the recast EU Anti-Trafficking Directive, which represents a binding legal framework”.

They also raised a red flag regarding the “haste” with which the bill proceeded to enactment.

Developed by Philip Nitschke, one of the founders of Exit International, whose Irish branch is led by Tom Curran, the ‘Sarco’ (short for sarcophagus), is a coffin-shaped machine that releases deadly nitrogen once activated from inside.

Nitrogen gas is also used as a method of execution in US states, such as Alabama.

The capsule has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland, where active euthanasia is banned but assisted suicide has been legal for decades. With assisted suicide you are given a lethal substance but administer it to yourself.

In a statement, the public prosecutor’s office of the canton of Schaffhausen said it has “opened criminal proceedings against several people for inducement and aiding and abetting suicide… and several people have been placed in police custody”.

A law preventing Catholic schools from offering places to Catholic children ahead of others is thwarting the push for divestment, according to a leading Catholic education figure.

Writing in the Irish Times, Chief Executive of the Catholic Education Partnership, Alan Hynes, commented on the provision of Section 11 of the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018, the effect of which is that Catholic schools (alone among faith schools) may not prioritise admission for children from families committed to the ethos of the school. Only Catholic schools are targeted in this way by the law.

“This discriminatory provision has now become a block on divestment of Catholic schools to non-Catholic patronage,” he said.

The reason is that communities are unwilling to relinquish the Catholic ethos of their schools if their children won’t be given any priority admission to attend neighbouring Catholic schools.

The Government’s decision to not proceed with the ‘hate speech’ provisions of a proposed ‘hate crime’ law has been welcomed by the Independent Senator, Ronan Mullen.

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee confirmed the move on Saturday, but said she will press ahead with the hate crime part of the criminal justice bill.

Essentially, this means that the parts that deal with alleged incitement to violence and hatred – commonly known as the hate speech elements – will be removed and the Government will press ahead with the other elements that deal with hate crime. This provides for tougher sentences for criminal offences where hate is proven as a motivation for the crime.

While opponents of the bill welcomed the change, they remain skeptical of the remaining, less-controversial part of the bill.

Independent Senator, Ronan Mullen said, the bill “will still need a precise definition of ‘hatred’ and the Government’s proposed weird new definition of ‘gender’ within the list of ‘protected characteristics’ has to change or it will set a negative precedent for future laws”.

Teachers are telling schoolboys that displaying traditional gendered roles in a family could lead to them committing rape, a bombshell report has claimed.

The Family Education Trust (FET) found that almost a third of schools it surveyed use relationship and sex education classes to teach pupils about ‘toxic masculinity’.

In one schools’ teaching materials, children are told that while masculinity ‘in itself is not necessarily a harmful thing’ certain masculine traits can be seen as ‘problematic’.

Another presents a ‘pyramid of sexual violence’, which suggests that certain minor behaviours such as ‘displaying traditional gendered roles’ may develop into other examples of ‘gender-based violence’ such as flashing, groping and even rape.

The FET said that such lessons are teaching pupils about a ‘problematic new ideology’ that presents the idea that ‘boys and men possess traits that are inherently negative for society’.