A hospital in New York has offered to admit the critically-ill British child, Charlie Gard, who has been the centre of a legal struggle to receive experimental therapy. The hospital said it would also be willing to send the treatment to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in the UK if his transfer to the USA could not be occur. In a statement, the New York hospital said it had “agreed to admit and evaluate Charlie, provided that arrangements are made to safely transfer him to our facility, legal hurdles are cleared, and we receive emergency approval from the FDA for an experimental treatment as appropriate”.

It added: “Alternatively, if approved by the FDA, we will arrange shipment of the experimental drug to Great Ormond Street hospital and advise their medical staff on administering it if they are willing to do so.”

Controversy threatened to disrupt the Oireachtas all-party committee on abortion yesterday even before its public deliberations had begun. TDs of Solidarity/People Before Profit, who want full repeal of the Eighth Amendment followed by a radical abortion regime, objected to the terms of the committee being set by its Chair, Senator Catherine Noone of Fine Gael, who is also pro-choice, as being too restrictive.  Specifically, they complained that the wording only mentioned amending, rather than repealing, the Eighth Amendment, and that the Assembly’s more liberal recommendations, such as abortion on socio-economic grounds were ignored. “If we hadn’t challenged it we could have been left with a really narrow remit that wouldn’t have been in keeping with the spirit of the Citizens’ Assembly,” Ms Coppinger said. The committee’s chair, Catherine Noone, it was claimed, had sought to focus on “minor cases of rape and fatal foetal anomalies”, but, Ms Coppinger added, “We said there is a woman at stake here”. Senator Noone rejected the charges as “absurd”. Nonetheless, the Committee’s agenda was changed to reflect the concerns of the more radical members.

The question of whether the Committee would seek full repeal of the Eight Amendment followed by a liberal abortion law, or seek a partial change to the Constitution with a narrow abortion law is expected to come to the fore. The former would hew closely to the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly and is the preferred route of pro-choice campaigners. However, many think the latter is the only option that has a reasonable chance of gaining majority support with the public.

The Government has announced the next census in 2021 will have an increased budget to allow for the inclusion of new questions. It is thought that questions about religion and ethnicity are likely to be changed. In the past, groups such as Atheist Ireland have complained that the question about religion was too binary, asking people to simply to state what their religion is. They have asked that people be asked instead about what religion they “practice” so as to allow a distinction between those who do and those who are lapsed. They claim that this would give a better gauge of religious adherence among the public.

Former Tánaiste and Labour party leader, Joan Burton, has called for a referendum on the pro-life amendment to take place before the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland in August of next year. Speaking in the Dáil she said it would be “highly desirable” if the Taoiseach would commit to holding the referendum between March and June 2018, as “it is appropriate for it to be held then because it should not become embroiled in the visit of the Pope to Ireland before the end of the summer”.

“We want a respectful debate. It is a very difficult personal issue for huge numbers of people. The people who campaign on the ‘ultra’ sides of either side may have very clear and shrill views but many citizens will want the opportunity to come to their conclusions about what is the most appropriate option,” she said. Labour wants Ireland to introduce a British-style abortion law which sees almost 200,000 abortions per annum performed in the UK.

The DUP’s Ian Paisley has said the party will not tolerate any diminution of the rights of the unborn for the sake of preserving its deal with the Tory government. Mr Paisley, who is a member of the House of Commons in Britain, said: “I’m going to make it absolutely clear that the rights of the unborn child, in my view and in the views of people in my party and on this bench, trump any political agreement that had been put in place.

“We’re making that absolutely and abundantly clear, and if anyone thinks that we would take a view where we would trade that issue of life and the sanctity of life on a political deal, they don’t understand me and they don’t understand my party and they need to be aware of that.”

The remarks came after the devolved Government in Wales announced they intend to follow the lead of the NHS in England and pay for the abortions of women from Northern Ireland. It is also expected that Scotland will make similar arrangements.

“We are living in the midst of a more aggressively secular culture which insists at times on conformity and compromise with the thinking of the day, and which tends to ridicule and reject any recourse to the concept of timeless or absolute truths”, Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin said in a homily marking the anniversary of the martyrdom of St Oilver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh, Eamon Martin.

Archbishop Martin said there was a “velvet-gloved” persecution against Christians today that is “cloaked in politeness”, calling it the kind that will “marginalise you, take your job away if you fail to adapt to laws that ‘go against God the Creator.’” More than that, he said, “There are some who would seek to expel people of faith from public discourse and debate, or caricature our Church as being “unmodern”, “authoritarian”, “hypocritical”, “bigoted”, “closed” to progress and personal rights and autonomy.”

The proper response, he urged, is to be courageous and witness to our faith publicly anyway, especially on issues of life, marriage and the family.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has urged Christians to be in the forefront of affirming the life and dignity of every person. Speaking at a mass that preceded the huge Rally for Life last Saturday, Dr Martin underlined the convictions of Christians in this regard: “We are convinced of the value of every human life from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death. We are convinced of the dignity of every life at every moment of the existence of every person. We are convinced that in cases of crisis, mother and unborn child have equal right to life and we pay tribute to a medical tradition which has been inspired by such a principal of life and which has served and saved lives.” The Archbishop affirmed that being pro-life involves taking a political stand in favour of the right to life of every person. “Being pro-life is a way to live as active citizens in defending that fundamental principle of democracy that every life has equal value, that we are all equal before the law.   A society that begins to establish its own categories of lives that are considered of lesser value than others, begins a process that undermines democracy.”

In delivering the report of the Citizen’s Assembly to the Oireachtas, Justice Mary Laffoy urged TDs and Senators to pay due regard to its conclusions. “I urge the members of the Oireachtas to view their recommendations with the respect and due consideration they deserve,” she said. The report consisted of an 83 page document and two large appendices running to over 1000 pages and recommended a widespread liberalisation of the country’s abortion laws. An Oireachtas committee is to consider the report and propose a concrete political path forward. A referendum is expected in 2018, and commentators are already cautioning about the political sensitivities involved, not least because Pope Francis is due to visit Dublin in August next year to attend the World Meeting of Families.