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!”

Americans’ view of the ideal number of children in a family has crept up to the highest level since 1973, according to the latest survey from Gallup.

Americans are about evenly divided in their views of whether smaller versus larger families are preferable. When asked about the ideal number of children for a family to have, 45% of Americans favour larger families, a steep increase from 38% in 2013, and an even wider gap from 33% in 2003.

This figure includes 29% who say having three children is ideal, 12% who think four is best, and 2% each who prefer having five or six or more children.

A 44% plurality of U.S. adults think having two children is best, and 3% say a single child is ideal.

This contrasts sharply with previous results.

Between 1967 and 1971, preferences for larger families plummeted from 70% to 52%. This drop was likely fuelled at least in part by concerns about a global population explosion, and changes in societal norms.

In 1973, Americans’ preference for smaller families of one or two children became the standard.

A number of Irish people died suddenly after having allegedly bought a fatal poison from a Canadian man.

Garda sources have confirmed the accused man, Canadian chef Kenneth Law (57), sold the chemical substance to more than 10 people in Ireland.

A small number of those, believed to be fewer than five, have since died suddenly. However, it is not yet established whether their deaths resulted from consuming the substance.

The Canadian authorities several months ago supplied details to the Garda about people in Ireland who had allegedly bought the substance from sites purportedly linked to Mr Law. Gardaí performed welfare checks on those people and determined a number had died suddenly.

Mr Law was first arrested by the authorities in Canada in May as part of an investigation into two deaths there. The scope of the investigation soon widened. While he now faces charges in relation to 14 alleged assisted suicides in Canada, it is suspected he sold the substance to as many as 1,200 people in 40 countries, including Ireland.

The Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman has said a proposed referendum to replace the constitutional protection accorded to mothers working in the home will not take place this year.

The Government intends deleting the protection that mothers should not be forced to work outside the home out of economic necessity–a constitutional provision that was never given legislative force.

A November referendum had been promised by the Government earlier this year, following a recommendation from a Citizens’ Assembly on ‘gender equality’.

But speaking on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics, Minister O’Gorman said: “I think it is most likely that it will be early next year.”

He said the Government is “close to the final wording” of two proposed amendments that would change the constitutional understanding of marriage, family, parenthood and and gender.

When the texts are finalised, a four-month lead-in time is envisaged to allow for a public information campaign.

On September 14, the HSE began recruitment for a new model of treatment for children and adults with patients being referred to a Belgian clinic by a former senior manager with Transgender Equality Network Ireland (Teni), a state-funded support and lobbying group.

Professor Donal O’Shea of the NGS said the new pathway is “absolutely an attempt to have an activist-informed model of care that would be dangerous and goes against all emerging evidence of the need to be safe and careful”.

​O’Shea is shocked that the new job specification does not require a candidate to have clinical experience in treating gender dysphoria.

“The idea that you would have an activist-driven model of care within the medical setting is just unthinkable,” he said. “There is no condition where you invite the activists to come in and direct how care should be delivered.

“Any endocrinologist can do gender care safely, but if you’re doing this in a person who’s not suitable to make that step on the journey, it’s an incredibly negative, destructive and dangerous step for that individual.”