A General Scheme of legislation dealing with Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) and Surrogacy is being worked on in the Department of Health and should be ready by June according to Minister for Health, Simon Harris. He told the Dáil that the legislation “will regulate a range of practices for the first time, including: gamete (sperm or egg) and embryo donation for AHR and research; surrogacy; pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) of embryos; posthumous assisted reproduction; and stem cell research”. Once the General Scheme is completed, it will be submitted to the Government for cabinet approval and then on to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health for pre-legislative scrutiny. 

A retired senior judge has told the Irish Times that much of the misery seen in Irish courts is caused by the lack of a father figure in offenders’ lives. “I did the [High Court] minors’ list for one or two years, and it’s extraordinary the suffering that happens in some cases. We expect social workers and the HSE to father and mother these children. It’s an extraordinarily difficult task.”

Garrett Sheehan, who stepped down from the Court of Appeal last month after a decade on the bench lamented the erosion of fathers from family life:

 “What’s happened in our society today is we have allowed the role of the father to be undermined to our great detriment in human terms but also in financial terms; and one of the things we have to do is encourage young men to be responsible for their children.

“We really have to go back and start at that point. We’ve allowed the position and importance of the father to become eroded.”

Recently the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published an excerpt of a study that children under the age of 14 are not cognitively capable of crossing a busy street “because children lack the perceptual judgment and physical skills needed to consistently get across safely.” The claim surprised other professionals in the field of pediatrics as the same AAP also frequently promotes the claim that children this age or younger are cognitively capable of deciding that they are the wrong sex. The AAP even go so far as to claim that children are cognitively competent to consent to puberty blockers, toxic sex hormones and mutilating sex reassignment surgery.

A rival professional body, the American College of Pediatricians, has published research that documents the cognitive limitations of adolescents that compromise their ability to provide informed consent. A statement from the College criticised the AAP’s selective application of this research: “Apparently, cognitive immaturity is an obstacle to crossing the street but not for giving consent to a sex change. Looks like “correctness” outranks science when science gets in the way of agenda.”

Dr Martin Mansergh, a leading member of the Church of Ireland and a former senior adviser to successive Fianna Fail Taoisigh has criticised the use of Protestantism by Irish liberals for political purposes. Writing in The Irish Catholic this week, he said that Irish liberals sometimes used Protestants to advance their social agenda without any real “concern for the rights of religious minorities”. He cited opposition to the 8^th amendment back in 1983 as an example. In more recent times, he says, Irish liberals’ drive for secularism has usurped that of pluralism, and rendered superfluous even the lip service usually given to minority religious: “Such cover has ceased to be necessary, and advancing secularism has largely discarded pluralism.” Given this new situation, Protestant Bishops are now increasingly left to fend for themselves in defending minority interests: “Church of Ireland bishops have had to point out that the rights of minority denominations to run faith-based schools should not be trampled upon on the basis of some populist surge.”

Fianna Fáil leader, Michael Martin, has declined to say whether he would agree with abortion in the cases of rape and incest.  Speaking on Kildare FM, he said: “It’s not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’; that depends on a number of issues.” He added: “I know people today who are alive whose mothers, in one particular case, was raped. She was the outcome of that and she gets very angry when people suggest she should never have had a life.” Fianna Fáil will allow their members a vote of conscience on the outcome of the deliberations of an Oireachtas committee that will consider the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly. The make-up of that committee is yet to be finalised, though it is expected to include pro-life voices, Deputy Mattie McGrath, TD, and Senator Ronán Mullen.

A provision of an Adoption Bill that would impede adopted children from contacting their birth parents without their permission has come under sustained attack. The Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2016 contains a provision that adopted children must sign an undertaking not to contact their birth parents if given their birth certificate except in certain circumstances. However, the provision has been fiercely criticised by adopted children. Noelle Brown, who was born in the Bessborough mother and baby home in 1965 and then adopted, said it amounted to a “barbaric piece of legislation”. She said adopted people were entitled to equality and therefore access to their full records. “I want to feel equal to every other citizen in Ireland, and not remain a reminder of our terrible past and one that needs to shut up and get over it,” she said. Adoption Rights Alliance director Susan Lohan said adopted people were entitled to “unconditional and unfettered access” to their documents. She said only adopted people understood the “shattered narrative” of adoption. “It is absolutely vital that this information be given to adopted people in a timely efficient and complete manner,” she told the conference which was organised by the Adoption Rights Alliance. She described the proposed undertaking as “absolutely odious”

The Minister for Education, Richard Bruton’s proposed changes to the admission policies of faith-based schools have come under attack from members of his own party. His proposal would make it impossible for faith-based schools to prioritise the admission of children of their own faith who live beyond the catchment area of the school. At a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting, Deputy Colm Brophy and Senator Neale Richmond said the Bill could have unintended implications for minority religious groups, particularly Protestants. Minister Heather Humphreys urged her Cabinet colleague to engage directly with minority religious groupings and warned of unintended consequences for certain schools. Minister Charlie Flanagan told the meeting the proposed legislative changes could be viewed as a threat to the Protestant identity. He said such discussions could potentially have an impact on the political deadlock in Northern Ireland.

In a shocking case in Italy, a woman has been accused of faking a pregnancy in order to conceal an illegal surrogacy. Then, when the child turned out to be of mixed-race, she returned the baby to its biological parents. Surrogacy is illegal in Italy, and attracts prison time and heavy fines. The woman is alleged to have paid 20,000 euros for the child, and she wore a latex pregnancy bump which she bought online in order to fool family and friends into believing she was pregnant. Officials in the town of Latina outside Rome received an inquiry about registering a home-birth, but became suspicious when no mother subsequently showed up. Police investigated and uncovered the scheme. The baby has now been taken into foster care.