There has been a 65pc increase in the number of ‘gender recognition certificates’ issued last year compared to 2021.

The certificate means the person has changed their sex in the eyes of the law and is entitled to a new passport, drivers licence, and other documents reflecting their changed status.

A person need only sign a form to effect the change.

Unlike the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, there is no requirement under the Irish legislation for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria or evidence that applicants have been living in their acquired gender.

A total of 321 certs were issued by the Government in 2022, latest figures brought to Cabinet Tuesday show.

This is an increase of 65pc from 2021, when 194 certs were issued and 2020, when 107 were issued.

People have been able to self-identify their gender since the Gender Recognition Act was passed almost without debate in 2015.

Thousands of people took part in last Saturday’s Rally for Life which sought to hold the government to account for the spiralling abortion rate.

The event took off from Parnell Square at 1.30 pm as the diverse crowd chanted ‘pro-life’, and waved posters and flags saying ‘Life Will Win’ and ‘Stop Aborting Our Future’.

Scrapping the 3-day wait would be seen as a reneging on promises to voters in the 2018 referendum, and a summer campaign to remind voters of that promise would be ramped up, attendees at the Rally were told.

Earlier, the Life Institute said that the pro-life gathering took place in the context of what was described as a “steep and disturbing” rise in the number of abortions taking place in Ireland, and just weeks after a bill seeking to legalise abortion on request to 6 months of pregnancy unexpectedly passed second stage in the Dáil.

Assisted suicide would be ‘inappropriate and dangerous’, according to a committee of the French Senate.

On Wednesday, the Committee of Social Affairs adopted a report on the end of life that breaks down point by point the arguments for euthanasia and assisted suicide.

According to the new report, active assistance in dying is “an inappropriate and dangerous response to a diffuse and equivocal request.” It asserts that the “collateral damage” that would come with legalising self-determined death would be greater than its benefits. The report also presents a wealth of data, scientific studies and the opinions of experts who were consulted in about 30 interviews.

Furthermore, the report criticises the transitory nature of the polls, which allegedly showed great support for a new end-of-life law. In addition, it emphasised the risks of “pressure from the most vulnerable” and the “threat of a commodification o chosen death.”

Therefore, the Committee decisively warned against the end-of-life bill which Minister Agnès Firmin Le Bodo must present before the end of summer.

The ongoing killings of Christians in Nigeria is “religiously motivated” and “almost entirely fuelled by Islamist extremism” according to a new study from a British parliamentary group.

In the report, ‘Nigeria: Unfolding Genocide? Three Years On’, by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, religious extremism is cited by over half of respondents as the biggest driver of violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than two million people.

“For years now, academics, politicians and major western NGOs in the west have downplayed the role of Islamist extremism in this slaughter,” said Henrietta Blyth of Open Doors UK and Ireland, one of the groups that contributed to the report.

“Instead, they have focused on ethnicity or climate change, both factors. But when I speak to women or men whose families have been butchered or villages burned down, they are clear. They know who is persecuting them and why. Why are we erasing their voices?”

She added, “This is a perilous situation, not just for Christians, but for the whole nation. This is, to quote the report, ‘a land grab facilitated by ethnic cleansing’, and it’s religiously motivated.”

The Dublin Archdiocese has forcefully rejected accusations it is ‘sabotaging’ the divestment of Catholic primary schools. In practice, it says, local communities are often unwilling to see their local Catholic school switch to a new management body. In a pilot Department of Education scheme last year, involving 29 parts of the country and over 60 schools, only two opted for divestment.

Speaking in the Dáil last week, Labour spokesman on Education Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said “the archdiocese can press all the buttons it wants and then get what it wants, which is the status quo” and that “these processes are being set up to fail, not by the Minister, but by those with a vested interested in preserving the status quo”.

Other TDs echoed his comments.

In response, the Archdiocese released a statement saying that for some, the divestment process can only be judged a success “if school communities conform to the demands of others outside of their communities for change”.

The statement added: “This impatience [by some politicians and activists] can often become a desire to impose desired outcomes, regardless of local views. The Catholic patrons, as bishops and pastors, are not minded to simply impose solutions onto communities. Minister Foley and her Department are of the same view.”

An assisted suicide activist will stand trial in the Netherlands today for supplying a lethal drug to those who wanted to commit suicide. The Public Prosecution Service (OM) said at least ten of these people actually took their own lives, while the actual number of people who died after using the drug supplied by the defendant may be higher.

The suspect, known as Alex S., is a member of Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW), an organisation that advocates eliminating most restrictions on assisted-suicide. S. is not a doctor, and is not an expert in medications. According to CLW, he has supplied Drug X to 2,200 members of that club, and possibly a total of about 10,000 people.

S. also allegedly supplied an antiemetic with the suicide drug, to prevent people from vomiting after taking Drug X.

The District Court in Den Bosch has set aside Monday and Tuesday for the substantive hearings of the criminal case. The suspect potentially faces years of prison time.

Those who support S. have announced that they will hold a demonstration prior to the trial.

The Health Service Executive is to review the use of puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria following an English decision to limit the use of the experimental treatment to clinical research.

The National Health Service (NHS) in England recently announced it was developing proposals that would see puberty blockers not being made routinely available outside of research.

Asked about the NHS’s change of policy, the HSE said it was reviewing this latest update and would establish a group this year to develop an updated model of care for the treatment of gender dysphoria. The group will be led by a clinical expert from a “relevant specialty”, a spokesman said.

“The HSE’s goal is to develop a person-centred model of care and invest in an integrated service that meets the needs of transgender people in Ireland.”

Blockers, used to pause puberty, work by suppressing the release of hormones. The long term effect of the drug is unclear, but one recent report into the English gender services said there were “gaps in evidence” around the drugs, while another described the quality of evidence to support their use as “very low”.

Most teens prescribed blockers go on to use cross-sex hormones and proceed to surgical procedures to ‘change’ their sex.

Teens as young as 14 could access euthanasia as the Labor-Greens government of the Canberra Territory considers the most permissive assisted suicide framework in all of Australia.

In the past five years, all Australian states have legalised euthanasia for adults with a terminal illness, in ‘intractable pain’, and who are expected to die within 6 to 12 months.

But the Australian Capital Territory’s newest proposal goes much further than that.

A community consultation report is set to be released by the ACT government on Thursday next with a final model for an assisted suicide framework to be revealed later in the year.

The framework is being headed by the state’s Human Rights Minister, Tara Cheyene, who is considering to allow children as young as 14-years-old to be eligible for VAD (‘Voluntary Assisted Dying’).

The ACT will also dismiss a requirement of an expected time of death between 6 to 12 months.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment’s free speech clause protects a Colorado web designer who feared she would be prosecuted under state anti-discrimination law for her faith-based objections to designing websites that promote same-sex weddings.

Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act includes sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. The question before the court was whether compelling an artist to speak or stay silent violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. It did not take up the question of whether it is a religious freedom violation.

“In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said in the 6-3 decision. “But, as this court has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our republic strong”.

Welcoming the decision, General Counsel Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom said, “The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe. The court reiterated that it’s unconstitutional for the state to eliminate from the public square ideas it dislikes, including the belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife”.

Thousands are expected to gather at the annual Rally for Life on Saturday, where speakers will urge the government to take action to tackle “surging abortion numbers”.

Commenting on the 22% rise in abortion numbers last year,” Rally for Life spokeswoman Megan Ní Scealláin asked: “Are women being led to believe that abortion is the only option?”.

She said that the government needed to take urgent action to tackle the spiralling abortion rate – and that it was “almost beyond belief that a strategy that would increase the abortion rate further was instead being considered”.

“One of the messages coming from the Rally is that TDs are being reminded that they promised voters in 2018 that the 3-day wait would be a ‘safeguard’ – and that the pro-life movement is reminding voters that scrapping that provision would be a breach of promise to voters,” she said.