The INTO has been mandated at its annual conference to lobby the Catholic church to end the requirement for a religious education qualification for anyone wishing to teach in a Catholic primary school.

The qualification is required because all teachers in such schools are expected to teach RE because it is an integral part of the curriculum. The teacher does not have to be a practising Catholic to do so.

It is not clear to what extent delegates at the conference reflect the view of most teachers in Catholic schools.

The attendees at the annual congress in also instructed their union to survey members on whether they believe Catholic faith formation should take place in schools and whether primary schools should have secular or religious patrons.

Around 93% of primary schools in Ireland are Catholic.

Delegates also instructed the union to form a task force to look at the future of primary school patronage and to examine the results of the survey. Where Catholic schools are earmarked for possible divestment, teachers and parents usually vote to remain in the Catholic system.

Florida’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s right to limit abortion, giving the green light for a six-week ban to take effect on 1 May.

But in a 4-3 vote, the justices also approved a November ballot initiative that, if approved, would overturn the ban and enshrine broad abortion access in the state’s constitution.

The ruling was applauded by national anti-abortion activists, many of whom see a six-week ban as the optimum for abortion policy.

At the same time, lawmakers who supported the Florida law called it a compromise as it includes exceptions for cases involving rape, incest, abnormalities and when the mother’s life is in danger.

It also requires patients seeking abortions to have two in-person doctor appointments with a 24-hour waiting period in between.

One the law is implemented it will block almost all access to abortion in the US South, where Florida had been an outlier, surrounded by states that had already implemented six-week or total bans on the procedure.

JK Rowling warned Police in Scotland against “going after” any woman for ‘misgendering’ trans people after the force dismissed the first complaints against her under the new ‘hate speech’ laws.

The Harry Potter author said she hoped “every woman in Scotland” would be “reassured” by the force’s announcement that her stance that biological men who identify as women are really men was not criminal.

In a direct challenge to Police Scotland, she said she expected all women who expressed similar views would be treated equally under the law “irrespective of profile or financial means”.

Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, said: “If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I’ll repeat that woman’s words and they can charge us both at once.”

Hours after the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force on Monday, Rowling posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people on Monday and ridiculed their claims to be women.

A physically healthy 28-year-old Dutch woman has decided to die by euthanasia due to mental illness in another sign of the expansive and highly permissive nature of the Dutch euthanasia law.

Zoraya ter Beek is scheduled to be euthanised in May — despite saying she is in love with her 40-year-old boyfriend.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to make assisted suicide legal in 2001. Since then, numbers availing of it have soared and the grounds have steadily expanded.

In 2022, 8,720 people were killed through euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands— representing roughly 5% of all the country’s deaths that year.

There has been a “sharp rise” in self-generated compromising images, of a sexual nature, among seven- to 10-year-olds, according to Education Minister, Norma Foley, who said she was informed about this by the media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán.

She said predators were using social-media apps to groom children, often by pretending to be another child, and then blackmailing them once they provide compromising images.

“It is every parent’s worst nightmare – but we have seen from the results of a recent court case in this jurisdiction that it can be all too real,” she said.

Minister Foley also said social-media algorithms aimed at keeping children online for as long as possible are spreading harmful content, causing sleep deprivation and damaging pupils’ attention spans.

The Minister was speaking at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation’s (INTO) annual congress in Derry on Monday evening,

Unmarried Quebec couples with children who split up will be able to divide the value of assets like houses and vehicles evenly as a “safety net” regardless of who paid for them, under a new “parental union” bill tabled by the provincial government.

The status would apply automatically to new parents who are neither married nor in a formal civil union.

The new parental union status will not encompass some family types, such as partners who are raising children together from previous relationships.

“The couple living together with a common child will be treated differently from the couple living together, each with a kid from a previous union, even though they will look very similar,” said Robert Leckey, dean of the McGill University law faculty,

Moreover, the reform doesn’t apply to couples without children.

Quebec is the only province with a French-style civil code, whereas all other provinces use common law whereby common-law relationships offer certain protection to partners, whether or not children are part of the equation.

A tweet by the State-funded National Women’s Council which says abortion is “a normal part of reproductive journeys” has provoked a strong backlash online.

The post added: “This #March28, we join activists worldwide in launching the Global Day to Destigmatize Abortions”.

It features a cartoon representation of a woman saying the words “Abortions happen every day”.

“The glib slogan that ‘Abortions happen every day’ is true only in the same sense that crimes happen every day. As with the everyday occurrence of crimes, the everyday occurrence of abortions does nothing to make them morally defensible”.

Another user, John Carvill, said “This promotion by the NWCI is both perverse and sick. Its state funding should be removed”.

Another added: “Abortion is not reproduction.  It is the antithesis of reproduction.”

Festive lights saying ‘Happy Ramadan’ are on display in London’s West End over the Easter Weekend to mark the Muslim penitential season of Ramadan, prompting some local representatives to ask why Easter itself is not being marked in the same way in a traditionally Christian country.

Tory councillor, Paul Swaddle, offered full support to the Ramadan lights but questioned why a Ramadan display in the window of Westminster’s city hall offices had not yet been replaced by an Easter one in time for this weekend.

Tim Barnes, the Conservative candidate for Cities of London and Westminster also welcomed the Ramadan lights but added: “it’s critical that we are seen to be welcoming to all of our major communities and are even-handed in how we represent and promote major festivals and religious holidays.”

The Westminster City Council said that it “routinely supports” a wide range of other faith activities throughout the year including Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday, Eid, Diwali and Hanukkah.

Christian Concern, a group which promotes Christian values, said that it planned in the future to put in a “number of applications” for decorations to celebrate Easter.

A society which has nothing more to offer people than ‘assisted dying’ has “really lost its way”, according to a Catholic Bishop. An Oireachtas committee has just recommended that Ireland permit assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Kevin Doran, Bishop of Elphin, spoke at the Chrism Mass in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo on Wednesday.

He told the congregation that our care for the most vulnerable among us is “a measure of our humanity”.

“It is understandable that people facing chronic or terminal illness sometimes feel that they might be better off if they were dead. But a society which has nothing more to offer to people than to assist them in ending their own lives, has really lost its way. Through the time we spend with the sick, listening to them, providing essential care, sharing memories, and, perhaps, praying with them, that we continue the healing ministry of Jesus. In this way, we bear witness in action to the fact that there is no such thing as a life without value”, he said.

The number of adults being baptised in France in 2024 has significantly increased over previous years.

This year 7,135 adults will receive the sacrament of baptism at the Easter Vigil. This is a substantial 32 per cent increase on 2023 when 5,463 adults were baptised.

The figures confirm an ongoing trend of growth in the French Church. In 2023, the number of adult baptisms in France had increased by 21 per cent over the number in 2022, and by over 50 per cent compared to 2021, when 3,639 adults were baptised.

In the past twenty years, those requesting baptism in the Catholic Church as adults has more than doubled.

Moreover, the growth is not merely at the expense of baptisms at a younger age either, as the figures show that in 2024, the number of adolescents being baptised doubled compared to the year before. Adolescent baptisms in France have seen consistent growth over the course of the last five years.