The No side in the family and care referendums accused Ministers of using interest groups to fight a proxy Yes case for constitutional change.

Senator Michael McDowell and Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said the lack of independent scrutiny raised questions about the McKenna ruling of the Supreme Court, which bans the spending of public money.

The gap emerged when the Standards in Public Office Commission and the new Electoral Commission said they had no power to examine whether non-government organisations (NGOs) comply with the Supreme Court ruling.

The ethics watchdog said: “While the Standards in Public Office Commission has a role under the Electoral Act 1997 in regard to third parties receiving donations for political purposes, including for a referendum campaign, it has no role concerning the expenditure of public monies by non-governmental organisations in the circumstances to which you refer.”

Canadian government regulations are endangering the ability of the Jewish community to produce kosher meat, leading kosher certifiers have said in a joint letter. Kosher meat is a requirement of Jewish religious law and limiting its availability is being seen as an attack on religious freedom that also affects Muslims.

The regulations on kosher and halal slaughter, according to sources familiar with the process, require that a significant number of 18 indicators be met to be certain that the animal is in an irreversible unconscious state in which it experiences no pain.

“Since these new guidelines have gone into effect, the amount of kosher meat produced in Canada has decreased dramatically,” said various Jewish groups. The community has been trying to temporarily supplement this shortfall with imported kosher meat, but this situation is not viable over the long term.”

The huge support for retaining the mention of mothers in the Constitution has been almost completely excluded from the post-referendum analysis according to one prominent journalist.

Speaking on the Tonight Show, Virgin Media 1, Sarah Carey said the people who voted against the referendums, especially the one that would have deleted the mention of mothers, “were not members of the far-right, were not confused, were not misinformed”.

“So many mothers contacted me and wrote to me about that aspect which I addressed in one of my columns. It has been almost completely excluded from the analysis. And Maria Steen who took on the Tánaiste and beat him in that debate [on RTE] wasn’t interviewed by any mainstream media on Saturday, so I had to watch an interview with her on the Gript Media platform”.

She continued: “…the aspect of mothers is very important. . . . This is a text I got from a cousin of mine who sent it to me on Saturday, and she said: ‘my whole circle of friends, work colleagues, facebook friends, who are all mothers and all ends of the social structure of society were most annoyed at the mother component and I think that has been excluded far too much from the debate’”.

The Irish Independent columnist added: “I was at a business networking meeting this morning for women, and professional women were  saying to me there, ‘Of course I voted “no”’.  One woman said to me ‘if it wasn’t in the Constitution, I’d be fighting to put it in”.

She concluded: “Mothers are exhausted. They are exhausted working. They are exhausted looking after their children.  They are exhausted keeping up to a standard they can’t meet. And the National Women’s Council of Ireland does not represent them”.

The HSE recently recruited Dr Karl Neff to create a new model of care for children suffering with gender dysphoria.

Asked if the new model will follow Wpath guidelines, the HSE said: “This will be informed by the best evidence-based clinical care for individuals who express gender incongruence or dysphoria and emerging and evolving international evidence will be reviewed as part of this work.

“There is no requirement for the outcome of this work to be aligned with the approach of any particular organisation.”

Last Tuesday, leaked internal ­forum messages from Wpath included a post in which one doctor appeared to describe how a colleague developed liver cancer after eight to 10 years of taking hormones. Other posts showed doctors discussing how to provide treatment to patients with serious mental health issues.

A video of an internal Wpath workshop showed clinicians admitting they struggled to get “informed consent” from patients as young as nine who wanted hormone treatments as they did not understand how this could harm their future fertility. Wpath has been accused of being over-influenced by trans-activists.

Fianna Fáil Senator Lisa Chambers has called on the Government to do more to help mothers who want to stay at home.

A recent Amarach Research opinion poll commissioned by The Iona Institute showed that 69pc of mothers with children under the age of 18 would prefer to stay at home with their children rather than go out to work if they could afford it.

Ms Chambers said that she could never have supported the word mother being taken out of the Constitution.

“It didn’t sit right with me, my gut told me that it wasn’t the right move.”

Ms Chambers described a Yes vote in the Care referendum as meaning taking a bit out and adding in a new section, and she said that while the 1937 wording might be a bit old fashioned, “there’s something in that”.

She said that Ireland needed to do more to allow people to stay at home if they want to. “I don’t think it’s a realistic option for lots of parents, particularly Mums, to stay at home if they want to, and that’s something we need to work on.”

Sinn Féin will not re-run the defeated referendums if they win the next election and form a Government despite a promise some weeks ago by Mary Lou McDonald to do exactly that.

Speaking on The Hard Shoulder yesterday, Sinn Féin TD and finance spokesperson Matt Carthy denied it would be a priority for them:

“It won’t be on our priority list at all… we have very important things that require to be changed in this society, above all housing and the need to reform our health services.”

He added: “We will not be re-running this referendum in the next Government”.

When launching Sinn Féin’s Yes-Yes campaign in February, leader Mary Lou McDonald said the party would re-run the questions with the wording proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly if it was elected to the next Government.

This now appears to be definitively ruled out.

“We got it wrong, quite simply,” Deputy Carthy said.

“We’re wrong because the people are always right, and the people told us emphatically what they think of this proposition.

“We have to reflect on that, we have to listen to that and above all, we have to respect it.”

Cork TD and leader of the Independent Ireland Party, Michael Collins, has hailed the rejection of the Government’s proposed changes to the constitution as “an event of generational and transformative significance that will echo all the way into the local and general election campaign.”

“An agenda that was inherently anti-woman, anti-carer, anti-disability rights and anti-marriage was resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of people who saw through the charlatanism of a government that has done nothing but relentlessly antagonise, infuriate and patronise people for the last number of years,” said Deputy Collins.

“The credibility gap that already existed between what this government says it wants for people and what it does in real terms has widened to become a chasm. People have had enough. They want government out and they want issues that actually impact their lives and the lives of their families brought in from the margins of political debate and returned to the centre stage where they belong.”

Referendums on the definition of family and on removing the protection offered to mothers in the home have been comprehensively defeated, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted the Government failed to convince the public and was given “two wallops” by the electorate.

The referendum on family – which proposed adding the term “durable relationships” to the Constitution – was defeated by a 2 to 1 margin with 67.69 per cent voting No.

The referendum on care – which proposed deleting the requirement to try and protect mothers from being forced out of the home due to “economic necessity” and replacing it with a gender-neutral recognition of care within the family – was also heavily defeated, with 73.9 per cent voting No. This was the greatest No vote in a referendum in the history of the State.

Aontú Party leader Peadar Tóibín said Children’s Minister, Roderick O’Gorman, has “serious questions to answer now in relation to this”.

He added that it was “incredible that Aontú was the only political party that campaigned against this”. He also said there is a bubble in the world of politics and that the Opposition also have questions to answer.

A retired medical scientist in the UK is facing trial following charges relating to her charitable work supporting women in crisis pregnancies.

Livia Tossici-Bolt, 62, held a sign reading “here to talk, if you want to” near an abortion facility in Bournemouth. While she held the sign, several individuals did approach Tossici-Bolt to discuss issues they were facing in their lives.

Local authorities confronted Tossici-Bolt, alleging that she had breached a local abortion “buffer zone”, which bans expression of approval or disapproval of abortion. They issued a Fixed Penalty Notice, which Tossici-Bolt refused to pay, on the grounds that she did not breach the terms of the PSPO, and had the right, protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, to offer consensual conversations.

The Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Council have proceeded to charge the volunteer, who awaits a trial date at Poole Magistates’ Court.

A coalition of medical professionals and disability rights advocates has expressed concern that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying (JCAD) is ready to recommend legislating for euthanasia/assisted suicide in Ireland.

On Wednesday evening, the committee voted to allow people with just six months to live to avail of euthanasia/assisted suicide by nine votes to three. For those with a neurodegenerative condition, this could be extended to 12 months.

A person must be diagnosed with a disease, illness or medical condition which is incurable and irreversible, advanced, progressive and will cause death – and also that is expected to cause death within six months.

The committee is scheduled to issue its report on 20 March which will contain a number of recommendations.

Dr. Miriam Colleran of Hope Ireland said: “we’re surprised that the majority of committee members have taken such a different opinion to the Danish Ethics Committee which recently published a report (16 of 17 members) that safeguards could not be introduced to make assisted dying, euthanasia and / or assisted suicide safe.”