A bill to hold a referendum to ease the constitutional restrictions on divorce was passed by the Dáil yesterday.
It is planned to excise from the constitution any waiting time for divorce. Currently a couple must be separated for four out of the last five years. The Government wishes to pass a law to cut this to two years. After that, any future Oireachtas can cut if further. The referendum on divorce will take place on May 24th, the same day as the local and European elections.
Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan made the case for the change yesterday. She said that in the 2015 Census 118,000 people declared themselves as separated and “we need to treat them with humanity and compassion”. She said that making divorce easier by reducing the waiting period “will help thousands of couples in Ireland who have suffered marital breakdown.” She had previously wanted a waiting period left in the Constitution.
Solidarity TD Paul Murphy, however, said there should be waiting time. He said there was a right to marry and there should be a “right to divorce without interference or judgment by State or Church”.
Opposition to the potential divesting of one out of eight Catholic primary schools in north County Dublin erupted in full view yesterday. The Department of Education are looking at Catholic primary schools in Portmarnock, Malahide and Kinsealy with a view to transferring one of them to a multi-denominational or non-denominational Educate Together school. Staff in at least three schools have written letters to parents warning of the possible consequences of a divestment of Catholic patronage, such as the ending of preparing children for the sacraments in school time and the celebration of feast days. Parents took to the airwaves and expressed their own objections. One woman told Ciara Kelly’s Newstalk show that her daughter has had six years of a Catholic Gaelscoil education but, if the school’s ethos changes in September, she will be forced to forfeit a Catholic education or move to another school and forfeit her Gaelscoil. Other parents complained of a lack of information of what might follow a divestment of patronage.
A pro-life film has exceeded all expectations becoming the fifth most watched movie in cinemas in the US on its opening weekend.
Forbes reports that Unplanned, a $6 million-budgeted film, about a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, earned $2.72 million on Friday, setting the stage for a likely $7.25 million debut weekend.
The movie did unexpectedly well despite receiving an R rating and an almost complete lack of coverage from the media, as well as overcoming numerous obstacles to its platforms on social media.
Many women are unclear on when the 12 week window to have an abortion for any reason begins, leading to fraught situations to get appointments, according to the Medical Director of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) Dr Caitriona Henchion.
“There has been a huge amount of confusion regarding what 12 weeks means, particularly because, for example, the pregnancy tests that a lot of women get in the pharmacy actually give them an estimate of date, but they are counting from conception… the legislation is based on counting from last period, which means you immediately have to add two weeks onto what you thought,” Dr Henchion told the Medical Independent.
She said that this can cause “a panic” to try and get an appointment on time.
“And some of the hospitals are really, really helpful, but at the same time they only have a certain number of appointments and it is only certain days of the week. They may be full and they may not be able to take any more and they may not have any theatre slots available and you get into this very, very fraught situation of trying to find someone a place to go,” she added.
Research by the Marriage Foundation predicts that just 57 per cent of girls and 55 per cent of boys currently aged 13 to 18 will marry in their lifetimes.
The figures, obtained from Office of National Statistics data, represent a steep decline from previous generations where, among people now in their 60s, 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men have married.
The study also reveals that current marriage rates among under-25s have plunged virtually to zero, with just eight per cent of women and four per cent of men in that age group getting married. This is because of young people now waiting until they are in their 30s to marry, compared with only a few decades ago.
The former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, warned that the authorities must act. He said: ‘The Government should be putting more money into marriage education. Teaching young people about relationships should be more than just giving them facts about sex. We should also be recognising marriage in a more favourable tax structure.’
Numerous enhanced and often expensive fertility treatments are offered in Irish fertility clinics despite them being of doubtful effectiveness, according to The Sunday Times.
The treatments are offered as expensive “add-ons” to a normal course of IVF, with the promise of increasing the chances of a successful pregnancy. However, in the UK the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has said of the very same add-ons that there is either no evidence that the treatments are safe and effective, or that there is a small or conflicting body of evidence, which means more research is required and the techniques should not be used routinely.
Nonetheless, clinics in Ireland offer these “extras” as their clients are “desperate” and willing to try anything that might help no matter how expensive.
A family from Ireland have had to abandon a move to New Zealand as their youngest daughter was denied a visa because she had Down’s Syndrome.
Bumikka Suhinthan, 15, was told she couldn’t enter the country because her ‘health was not of an acceptable standard’ and would impose excessive costs. Her mother, Nilani Suhinthan, 52, was headhunted for a £74,000-a-year IT consultant job in Auckland, New Zealand. She, her husband Nagarajah, 54, and other daughters Tanya, 19, and Saumia, 14, all received visas but Bumikka’s rejection has put an end to the planned move.
Despite the family offering to pay for the extra support their daughter would need in school, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) ruled Bumikka would be too great a burden. The mother and her husband Nagarajah, an engineer, have spent three months appealing the rejection, but a hearing last week ruled the decision was final. Nilani, who lives in Dublin, said: “It’s complete discrimination. I’ve always told her she isn’t any different but this tears it up. She doesn’t completely understand why we’re not going to New Zealand.”
Legislation on so-called “conversion therapy” that would outlaw some church ministries to people with same-sex attraction should proceed on an evidential basis.
Senator Ronan Mullen made the appeal in the Seanad on Thursday in response to a Private Members’ Bill by Sinn Fein Senator, Fintan Warfield.
Senator Mullen said “the highest value comes from what people want, provided it does not do harm”. He continued: “I do not know enough about it at this stage but if it can be demonstrated that this is harmful to people, there is a very good case to make it unlawful. If it cannot be shown to be harmful to people, we are back into the realm of individual choice.” He added that legislators “do not speak enough about the importance of an evidence base for proposals,” and recommended he and his colleagues should “look honestly at the current evidence”.
His remarks brought a critical response from an Assistant Professor in Gender Studies at UCD. Doctor Mary McAuliffe told breaking news.ie that the Senator’s remarks “implies that people who are LGBT have some sort of disorder that needs to be corrected rather than people who happen to be that way. I think that is a disturbing and dangerous route to go down.”
A Fine Gael local election candidate has spoken publicly of acting as a surrogate mother for two childless friends. Surrogacy of this kind is very rare compared with commercial surrogacy, or surrogacy where a couple pay a stranger ‘living expenses’ to have a child for them.
42-year-old Becky Loftus Dore, who is standing in the Kinnegad electoral area in the local elections on May 24th, is a mother of four children, and is currently 35 weeks pregnant with a baby boy intended for a couple she is friends with.
The child was conceived in vitro. This took place in Cyprus.
She warned others about the precarious nature of surrogacy in that the child will be born with no legal connection to either of the two people who intend to raise him. Moreover, even if the law changed, she cautioned: “You don’t know whether people are going to switch or change. A woman could form a bond and say ‘no, I want to keep it’.”
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) might include a question on sexual orientation in the 2026 census.
A spokeswoman for the CSO said a question asking whether a person was heterosexual, lesbian, gay or bisexual was being tested for the first time as part of the quarterly national household survey.
“It has just been included in the household survey for quarter one 2019. It is a question that requires full testing to get it right. We’ll start to have the first results from that later in the year and they will feed into discussions about what questions will be included in the 2026 census. It wouldn’t be included until then.”
The CSO statement comes as an OECD report calls for the inclusion of questions on sexual orientation and gender identity in member states’ censuses to tackle discrimination.
