The State’s “Free Contraception Scheme” has been expanded to include women aged 32-35, according to the Department of Health.

This means that from 1 July 2024, all women aged 17 to 35, inclusive, will be covered under the scheme.

This comes despite a 2019 Working Group on Access to Contraception, under the then Health Minister, Simon Harris, say the proposal would probably be a waste of public funds.

This extension has been supported by an additional €4 million in funding through the Women’s Health Fund under the Women’s Health Action Plan 2024-2025, with a total of €48 million now allocated to the scheme for 2024.

The announcement was careful to include women who now identify as men: “The scheme is open to women, girls and other people identifying as transgender or non-binary . . . and for whom prescription contraception is deemed suitable by their doctors”.

A senior Northern Ireland judge has ruled that a five-year-old child can be taken to regular church services and activities by his Christian foster parents against the wishes of her natural mother, who is an agnostic.

The High Court in Belfast heard the mother objected to the child receiving any form of religious instruction, while the foster parents were very active members of the Pentecostal Church.

The judge accepted evidence from the trust and the guardian that the child was well-settled in the placement and is receiving excellent care.

“The child’s emotional needs are clearly catered for in the placement,” he said.

“She has now achieved a stability in her current placement that was absent for the recent period in the mother’s care.

“Any change of placement would bring challenges. The child would lose the companionship of the children within the foster placement and her friendship group within the school setting.

“A critical factor is the lack of any continuity in contact with the child’s maternal family. There is none and nothing likely on the horizon.

“The current foster placement is a welcome port in the storm for the child.”

A bill to enable international and compensated surrogacy contracts passed the Dail on Wednesday night and will now be taken up by the Seanad.

TDs debated a Report on the bill compiled by the Select Committee on Health, a body consisting solely of Dail Deputies.

The Report proposed numerous amendments to the text of the bill, most of which were accepted.

Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, said one amendment, accepted by the Government “will bring in an allowance for net loss of income to be included as part of the permitted reasonable expenses incurred by a donor”.

This will allow egg donors “to be paid for a net loss of income” particularly those who “take time off . . . from their jobs to complete the donation process”, he said.

Critics say these expenses often amount to a fee in disguise, something reminiscent of commercial surrogacy which the bill’s authors say they oppose.

Another approved amendment added the word “net” to qualify “loss of income in the context of reasonable expenses incurred by a surrogate mother”.

Minister Donnelly said this “will allow for aspects such as social protection payments or income tax liabilities to be taken into account when seeking to calculate a surrogate mother’s potential loss of income”.

Support for families should be a prime concern of voters in the upcoming UK election according to the Head of the Archbishop of Westminster.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, has recorded a message encouraging Catholics, particularly young adults, to get involved and vote.

“I would like to put forward a theme for us all to think about. How do we seek to construct a society in which families can flourish? That’s the bedrock – many positive things flow from that,” he said.

In his message, Cardinal Nichols signposts resources that offer guidance on seven key topics of interest to Catholics.

“I ask you to look at these resources, explore them, become a bit more familiar with them so that when it comes to 4 July, you’ve got in your mind what you want to see the next government strive to achieve,” says Cardinal Nichols.

“My view is that our next government should strive to create the circumstances in which families can flourish. So please get ready to vote on 4 July.”

The decline of Christianity has led to a sclerotic EU, but even an imperfect one is better than none at all.

That’s according to the papal adviser and Archbishop of Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich.

In an interview he said Christians are increasingly becoming a minority and there is no way back to a Christian Europe, which has led to a lack of political ideas.

Eighty years ago, the construction of Europe was an explicitly Christian project; French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi in particular were staunch Catholics. When asked whether there are no more Schumans or Gasperis today, Hollerich said: “To be honest, I don’t see any.”

According to the Jesuit, politicians today no longer have any convictions: “They read the polls and adapt their opinions accordingly.” This is a big mistake, both at national and European level. Hollerich: “The political dispute has faded into the background. Today, those who lead us no longer have a backbone.”

At the same time, the cardinal, who represents Europe on Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals, emphasises: “If I had to choose between an imperfect Europe or its absence, I would always opt for the European Union.”

The damaging impact on mothers’ mental health of living in a home that is cold, damp and overcrowded is leading to “much poorer” outcomes for their children, a landmark study published on Thursday finds.

“Mothers experiencing inadequate housing and poor-quality neighbourhoods tend to have higher levels of depression, worse self-rated health, and find parenting more stressful, as well as reporting greater conflict and less closeness with their children,” finds the report from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

Titled Housing, Health and Happiness: How Inadequate Housing Shapes Child and Parental Wellbeing, the study notes longer time spent in “inadequate housing” leads to “more negative wellbeing outcomes”.

Additionally, it finds low-income households and those headed by lone parents, migrants or disabled people are “more likely” to live “in unsuitable homes, to struggle to heat these homes and to reside in areas characterised by greater disorder and lower levels of social capital”.

There has been a 4% increase in the number of abortions where a baby has a disability, from 274 in 2022 to 285 in 2023. 49 of these were abortions where the unborn child had Down’s syndrome.

Regarding total numbers, statistics released by Public Health Scotland reveal an increase of 1,600 abortions or 9.63% in one year, with numbers increasing from 16,607 in 2022 to 18,207 in 2023.

The abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 increased from 16.1 in 2022 to 17.6 in 2023. This represents a 9.32% increase from 2022.

The figures come just a week after the abortion numbers for England and Wales for 2022 were released, which revealed that there were over a quarter of a million abortions in that year.

Young adolescents have “greater peer problems” and fewer friends than their counterparts a decade ago, with girls especially experiencing “increased emotional difficulties”, a major report finds.

The study from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says teenage girls’ increased emotional issues are negatively impacting their relations with peers and parents – particularly their mothers – and their engagement with education.

Titled The Changing Social Worlds of 13-Year-Olds, the report finds girls are spending more time online than boys – a reversal of the situation a decade earlier.

Drawing on data from two cohorts of children, born in 1998 and 2008, in the longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland study, the report analyses their lives at age 13 in 2011/12 and 2021/22 respectively. The decade between was one of “considerable social and policy change, including reform of the junior cycle, growing digitalisation and the disruption of the pandemic”, leading to “very significant changes in the lives of 13-year-olds”, it says.

A person’s perception that they are being judged may trigger the arrest of someone engaged in silent prayer near an abortion facility, according to the author of an exclusion zone bill in Scotland.

Green MSP Gillian Mackay’s bill would create buffer zones of 200 metres around such facilities, in a bid to prevent women and staff from being “harassed”.

Controversially, this would even include the act of praying silently.

Tory MSP Jeremy Balfour lodged an amendment to exclude silent prayer from its terms.

He said he himself stands at a bus stop within 200 metres of an abortion clinic in Edinburgh three times a week, and does sometimes pray while waiting there and could therefore be subject to prosecution.

However, Ms Mackay told Mr Balfour: “The offences are not about what you are thinking, but what you are doing and the effect that has on others.

“If someone stands silently praying for a long time, deliberately looking at women accessing an abortion clinic, or for example with a sign, then they maybe committing an offence”.

Ms Mackay said that was “not because of the prayer, it is because of the sense of judgment”.

201 Irish women went to the UK for an abortion in 2022, according to the UK Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

On Thursday, it published statistics on abortion in England and Wales.

Of the 201 Irish women who travelled there for the procedure, 126 did so under what is called “ground C”, which allows for abortions due to physical or mental health concerns up to 24 weeks. In Ireland, abortion is permitted for any reason, but up to 12 weeks.

According to the Department, almost all of the abortions carried out under ground C were reported as being performed because of a ‘risk’ to the woman’s mental health.

In addition, 75 women had abortions performed under ground E – defined as “a substantial risk that, if the child were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped”.

This included 37 cases where the unborn child had Down’s syndrome.