The failure to consult parents about new regulations on Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) in the North has caused “massive anger,” according to Baroness Nuala O’Loan.

Writing in the Irish Catholic, the former Police Ombudsman said education is a devolved matter for the Assembly and when a law was introduced in Westminster in June without any prior consultation, providing that pupils must be made aware of abortion access, it provoked anger among the parents.

She described this as “typical of the contempt with which the government treats the people of the North now”.

Encouraging parents to participate in the Department for Education’s consultation on guidance and support material, Baroness O’Loan said that it “will give people an opportunity to challenge what has happened, to call for clear, unqualified parental rights to withdraw children and for the provision of information which really is clear, scientific and accurate”.

Pro-life work will continue in Northern Ireland despite the arrival of so-called “Safe Access Zones”, according to one prominent advocate.

The exclusion zones come into effect today and are designed to stop any pro-life presence outside hospitals and clinics that provide abortion.

Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, Director of Precious Life, Bernadette Smyth said that while they will need to be more “creative” with regards to their work and that they may have to do things differently, they’re “not going away”.

She also raised an apparent inconsistency between the operation of exclusion zones in England and Wales in contrast to Northern Ireland.

“In early September, the UK home secretary Suella Braverman announced that silent prayer near abortion facilities is not a crime in the UK. That really encouraged us because she has written to every police force in the country to clarify that silent prayer, in itself, is not unlawful,” Ms Smyth said.

“I have written to my MP, Ian Paisley Jr, and I’ve asked for clarity regarding this statement by the home secretary. Does this apply to Northern Ireland?”

“We need clarity from our MPs, . . . that we can continue, even if it’s silent prayer.”

A bill to create exclusion zones around medical facilities that provide or administer abortions has passed its first vote on its way to becoming law. Very few countries have national laws preventing pro-life activities near centres that conduct abortions.

The Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services) (Safe Access Zones) Bill 2023 was approved in the Dáil by 113 to 10 votes.

It will now go to a committee stage to be examined in far greater detail.

Responding to the vote, a spokesperson for Aontú said “Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, Labour and PbP have voted on mass for censorship zones around all abortions clinics in Ireland”, adding: “the right to peaceful respectful protest is being eroded”.

The Pro-Life Campaign said it was “tragic that such a regressive and draconian piece of legislation as the #SafeAccessZonesBill was rail-roaded through the Dáil”.

“We owe a lot of gratitude to the 10 TDs who bravely voted against it.

“Once the unintended consequences and discriminatory nature of this law is realised, many government TDs may start to have buyer’s remorse”.

Public health doctors have expressed concern about unprecedented levels of the sexually transmitted infections chlamydia and gonorrhoea in the Mid West so far this year.

Last year 798 cases of chlamydia were recorded – a 20% increase on 2019 – while 188 cases of gonorrhoea were also recorded – a 41% increase on 2019.

These were the highest numbers recorded for both infections over the past ten years.

So far this year, 664 cases of chlamydia have been recorded and 274 cases of gonorrhoea.

Dr Kenneth Beatty described the rising incidence as “an issue of public health concern”.

“For males and females, chlamydia and gonorrhoea can lead to painful inflammatory diseases, which can lead to infertility,” he said.

He said that wearing a condom correctly and availing of frequent testing is “the most practical way” to prevent infections.

A new State-funded fertility treatment scheme will include the freezing of embryos for up to two years, the Health Service Executive has confirmed.

Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the HSE’s Dr Cliona Murphy said: “A full publicly funded cycle of IVF will comprise of one episode of ovarian stimulation.

“That’s developing the eggs and then transferring any resultant fresh or frozen embryos until such time as all embryos have been used – or the treatment results in a live birth.

“This means frozen embryos could be used in future attempts, so potentially somebody could get pregnant on the third try of that cycle.”

The funding includes specific treatments at private fertility clinics nationwide.

The cost of these varies from €900 for IUI while one round of ICSI costs upwards of €5,700.

Free treatment in fertility clinics will not be offered to same-sex couples, single people or couples using donated eggs or sperm, though that will change when a forthcoming AHR bill passes the Oireachtas.

It will be offered to applicants who are in a relationship with their current partner for at least one year. There is no requirement to be married.

Irish people should be allowed make ‘goodwill payments’ to women willing to carry a baby for them in a surrogacy arrangement, according to Senator Mary Seery Kearney.

Such arrangements are banned in almost all European countries on the grounds that it exploits poor women and commodifies babies.

Speaking to Prime Time regarding upcoming legislation to enable both domestic and international surrogacy, the Fine Gael Senator said she is not in favour of commercial surrogacy, which involves an agency being paid to facilitate a surrogacy arrangement and hire a surrogate. However, she said there should be provision for a ‘goodwill payment’ to be given directly to the surrogate from the contracting couple. However, critics say a ‘goodwill payment’ is effectively a fee.

While the legislation is due to ban commercial surrogacy in Ireland, it is being debated whether it may allow Irish couples and single people to make commercial arrangements abroad and then bring a baby home.

If the bill does not allow it, Senator Kearney says there will be a demand for ‘hidden payments’ that could be used to coerce Irish applicants.

An expert in assisted suicide says he fears the practice is increasingly viewed as a remedy against all kinds of suffering.

Former supporter turned critic of the Netherlands’ right-to-die laws, Theo Boer, a professor of healthcare ethics, told a Dáil committee yesterday that his country’s euthanasia laws turned the whole landscape of dying, illness, suffering, and ageing upside down.

Speaking to the Oireachtas joint committee on ‘assisted dying’, he said the number of people availing of it in the Netherlands has quadrupled in 20 years, from just under 2,000 people in 2002 to almost 9,000 in 2022.

In some neighbourhoods, assisted suicide/euthanasia account for 15pc to 20pc of all deaths, he said.

He also said there has been an expansion of the reasons for it — from those who feared spending their final days in pain and agony to patients today fearing loneliness, alienation and care dependency.

Independent Senator Ronán Mullen asked whether there was any reduction in suicides where euthanasia was legalised.

Professor Boer said that in the Netherlands, in some categories of those allowed to engage in euthanasia, the number of suicides has risen against expectations.

“There is no reason to assume that allowing euthanasia will bring down the number of suicides.”

Senior civil servants in the UK have warned of a “woke takeover of Whitehall” that risks “improperly” influencing Government policy.

The Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, was told in a letter signed by 42 staff from 16 departments that ideology on gender promoted by trans activists has become embedded in the Civil Service in a “significant breach of impartiality”.

It says the concept that “everyone has a gender identity which is more important than their sex” is “treated as undisputed fact”.

Staff who dare to air gender-critical views – meaning they believe there are two biological sexes that cannot be changed – suffer “serious harassment” at work and live with a “pervasive fear” they will be victimised, the letter adds.

As a result, it says, the operation of government is being “distorted” and the authors plead for “urgent action to ensure that Civil Service impartiality is upheld, and freedom of belief is respected”.

The natural increase in population has halved in the last ten years, according to the latest figures from the CSO.

This tallies with Ireland’s trend of falling fertility rates and an aging population.

Last year, there was a natural increase of 20,000 people in the State comprised of 55,500 births and 35,500 deaths. In 2013, the natural increase was almost 40,000.

The figures were released in the Population and Migration Estimates for 2023.

While the natural rise in population was modest, the overall rise was 97,600 people which was the largest 12-month increase since 2008.

There were 141,600 immigrants which was a 16-year high.

Of those immigrants, 29,600 were returning Irish citizens, 26,100 were other EU citizens, and 4,800 were UK citizens. The remaining 81,100 immigrants were citizens of other countries including almost 42,000 Ukrainians.

Over 64,000 people departed the State in the 12 months to April 2023, compared with 56,100 in the same period of 2022. This was one of the highest figures of recent years.

Pope Francis included abortion and euthanasia in a broad critique of threats to human dignity on a trip to France at the weekend.

He travelled to Marseille to attend the closing session of an international conference focussing on the Mediterranean Sea to discuss challenges related to the environment, migration, and violent conflict.

It was attended by Church and government leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron; Vice President of the European Commission Margarítis Schinás; and Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.

Pope Francis told the delegates: “Who listens to the groaning of our isolated elderly brothers and sisters, who, instead of being appreciated, are pushed aside, under the false pretenses of a supposedly dignified and ‘sweet’ death that is more ‘salty’ than the waters of the sea? Who thinks of the unborn children, rejected in the name of a false right to progress, which is instead a retreat into the selfish needs of the individual?”

He told participants at a mass human life is discarded not only in the “rejection of many immigrants,” but also in “countless unborn children and abandoned elderly people”.

He reiterated his comments on the Papal plane on his return to Rome.

“You don’t play with life, neither at the beginning nor at the end. It is not played with!”