The Australian State of Queensland’s Department of Education and Training have warned school principals that they are expected to take action against students caught evangelising to their peers. “While not explicitly prohibited by the (legislation), nor referenced in the Religious Instruction (RI) policy, the department expects schools to take appropriate action if aware that students participating in RI are evangelising to students who do not,” says the department’s report, as such evangelising, “could adversely affect the school’s ability to provide a safe, supportive and inclusive ­environment.” Departmental policy defines “evangelising” as “preaching or advocating a cause or religion with the object of making converts to Christianity” and cite as examples sharing Christmas cards that refer to Jesus’s birth, creating Christmas tree decorations to give away and making beaded bracelets to give to friends “as a way of sharing the good news about Jesus”.

The defence of the right to life as part of the common good will be raised by Archbishop Eamon Martin when he meets with Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, as part of official Church State talks due to take place at the end of the summer.  A Church source told the Sunday Times that Archbishop Martin is expected to tell Mr Varadkar that the Eighth amendment, which recognises the right to life of the unborn child, is for the “common good”. Dr Martin will make it clear that the Church will campaign against repeal of the amendment, through homilies at mass and in pastoral letters.

The talks are part of official Church-State dialogue initiated by Bertie Ahearn in 2007 and will include representatives of various Churches, faith communities and Atheist Ireland. They are due to take place at the end of the summer before the Dáil resumes after its summer recess. 

Pro-choice campaigners and politicians are up in arms over a plan to hold an abortion referendum in mid-summer when many students are out of the country. In a media briefing on Friday, Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the Government intend holding up to nine referendaa in the next year on dates in June/July and November 2018, and May or June 2019. A spokesman for the Taoiseach said that an abortion referendum would take place “ideally before the end of June” next year. This would “give sufficient time to tease out the issues”, he said, while “the desire is to address it expeditiously”.

Ailbhe Smyth of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment described the Taoiseach’s plan as “extremely worrying” and said holding the referendum in the summer months, when many students go abroad, “would effectively mean disenfranchising thousands of young people”. Solidarity TD, Ruth Coppinger,  said: “The optimum time is when a lot of young people can vote. The marriage equality referendum was on May 22, 2015.” Orla O’Connor, director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, said the vote should take place “in May at the latest” because younger voters tend to go abroad for the summer. Ivana Bacik, a Labour Party senator and pro-choice advocate, said: “It should be held before the summer. The concern would be if it was delayed beyond that, other events, including the Pope’s visit [in August] or potentially another general election, could affect it.”

The Government has appointed Judge Frank Clarke as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Writing in the Irish Times, legal analyst, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic said the Judge comes with a “radical edge” that may take the Court in a new direction.

In the 2013 Marie Fleming case, the court rejected the argument that there was a right to assisted suicide. While Clarke did not give a written opinion, MacCormaic writes that “given Clarke’s line of questioning at the hearing it would be no surprise if he argued in private for the alternative result, which would have been considered within the current judiciary quite a radical position”.

In a major surrogacy case before the Court in 2014 on whether the genetic mother of twins born to a surrogate could be registered as their mother, Clarke alone concluded that, in the absence of a definition of the term, “mother” applied equally to a birth mother and a genetic mother.

In a foreshadowing of his jurisprudential philosophy, he also remarked that “there may be circumstances where the courts are required to develop common law principles to meet new scientific circumstances” – a view that his colleague, Justice Adrian Hardiman saw as indicating a strikingly expansive view of the courts’ power.

A new poll found that 41% of the public would vote to repeal the section of the Constitution protecting the place of the mother in the home versus 39% who would vote against repeal. Significantly, more women than men support retaining the clause. Fine Gael TD, Josepha Madigan, who is pushing for repeal, called the results “surprising” and said an “information campaign” would be necessary before a referendum might be held.

Separately, Professor Geoffrey Shannon, the government’s special rapporteur on child protection, said removal of the clause could affect Ireland’s generous maintenance regime for dependent spouses in the event of marriage breakdown. Shannon said: “A dependent spouse fares better in Ireland than in virtually any other jurisdiction in the world, and that’s due to this lifelong obligation. It is a safety net or a protective mechanism for the spouse who acts as homemaker.”

Meanwhile, in the Examiner, columnist Victoria White has penned a comprehensive defense of the clause, though adding it should be expanded to include fathers. This proposal, to retain and expand the clause, attained 98% support among the participants in the Constitutional Convention of 2013. She panned the desire of Fine Gael and Labour to delete the article as “cheap politics”, and derided as “balderdash” the claim that the clause was ever meant to keep women in the home. She said it was the US feminist Ivy Pinchbeck who wrote movingly about the conditions of young mothers in factories who inspired the clause. Indeed, White placed the political choice as either preferring one parent to stay home to raise children, or preferring both parents to leave the home to generate greater taxable income for the State.

The executive director of SpunOut.ie, Ireland’s youth information website, has questioned whether parents should have the right to decide whether their children may have access to online social media. While emphasising children’s rights, Ian Power said that some will point to the role of parents and guardians in tempering these rights “with concern for their child’s security”.

“It is true that parents and guardians have a significant role to play: the ideal will always be that children’s rights and parental responsibilities go hand-in-hand. Yet it is no great difficulty to imagine a scenario in which a young person’s rights are directly harmed by an abusive or neglectful parent. In such cases, the ability to access online services in confidence is an incomparable tool for securing help and support,” he said.

The Government has now decided that “digital age of consent” for children to sign up to online services without parental approval should be set at 13, which is at the lowest end of the EU recommendation, which is between 13 and 16 years of age.