Following a survey of parents by the Irish Department of Education, 23 primary schools across the country will be divested of their Catholic Church patronage.

"Conscience clauses" that permit religious pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception or the "morning after" pill are unsatisfactory and should be dropped, say experts.

The Presidents of the European Council and European Commission today heard a plea for greater protection for pregnant women's right to life following the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland.

A consultation among young people in Ireland initiated by the President, Michael D. Higgins, shows strong support for making the country a secular state.

The Secular Medical Forum has condemned the state of abortion laws in Ireland after a 31-year old woman died of septicaemia following a protracted miscarriage in Galway, Ireland.

As further evidence of the secularising direction of Ireland and its downgrading of the influence of the Catholic Church, the Defence Minister, Alan Shatter, recently refused to allow the army to provide a "guard of honour" for a procession during the Vatican's International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.

A new Ipsos MRBI poll for the Irish Times shows that although 89 per cent of people in Ireland still describe themselves as 'Catholic', it is not Catholicism as the Pope knows it.

The lower house of the Irish Parliament has rejected a private member's bill to ease the Republic's abortion laws. In a vote of 109 to 20, the Dáil rejected the bill brought by Clare Daly of the opposition Socialist Party that would permit "termination of pregnancy where a real and substantial risk to the life of the pregnant woman exists."

An extensive survey of Irish Catholics has found widespread dissent from Church teachings, particularly on questions of sexuality.

The Irish government is about to start the process of taking some schools out of the control of the Catholic Church faces a clash with bishops over the proposed scrapping of an old primary school rule which states that religion should underpin every aspect of daily school life.

Pro-choice groups in Ireland have expressed hopes that a new expert committee set up by the Government will recommend that the laws on abortion will be relaxed.