The Director of The Iona Institute was a guest speaker at the annual conference of the Progressive Democrats last Saturday. He urged the PDs to develop closer ties to the Churches, and also to develop a family policy that favoured marriage, while also assisting all families in need.

A final wording for the Government's proposed referendum on children's rights has been decided upon, it emerged yesterday.

A proposal from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) to abolish the tax credit for spouses who work in the home was dismissed yesterday as “ludicrous” by leading politicians.

Divorce rates in the US continue to rise among those who have a poor educational background, new research from the University of Maryland has found.

The Catholic Church in Scotland has decided to fight new legislation which forces them to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents.

Two major initiatives, aimed at helping to strengthen marriage, have been launched by the Catholic Church in the UK. The projects have been timed to coincide with National Marriage Week, which runs from the 7th to the 14th of February.

Government plans to hold a referendum enshrining new rights for children were set to undergo significant change yesterday, as reports suggested that it was considering a new wording for the proposed amendment.

The Government's controversial tax individualisation scheme has been branded unfair by the main Opposition parties.

Married couples who stayed together are unsung “heroes” according to the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The number of applications for divorce and judicial separations has more than trebled since the introduction of divorce legislation exactly 10 years ago, according to official figures.

The College of Psychoanalysis debated the causes of social breakdown and crime during a meeting in the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin on Saturday. A paper was presented by psychoanalyst and lecturer, Rob Weatherill which blamed psychoanalysis itself for many of the pathologies facing modern society, including family breakdown.

The Government plans to insert five new provisions in the Constitution aimed at strengthening children's rights and providing greater protection against child sexual abuse, according to reports.

A Government briefing document on the proposed wording says that the Government plans to allow the Oireachtas to introduce a zone of 'absolute protection', below which it would be automatically criminal to have sex with a child. The age of sexual consent, and the age at which the zone of protection would come into effect, will be left for the Oireachtas to decide.

This is intended to address the fallout from the Supreme Court decision last July which ruled that the law which had previously criminalised sexual activity with minors was unconstitutional because it made no provision for a defence of “honest mistake'.

Currently the Government plans to incorporate all five changes in a single amendment which would substitute Article 42.5 of the Constitution, confirming earlier reports that the Government wanted to “bundle” all its proposals under one question. It also plans to change the title of Article 42 of the Constitution from "education" to "education and child protection".

On the issue of children's rights, the briefing notes provided to Opposition parties suggest the Government will avoid setting out a list of explicit rights for children. Instead, it will set out in more explicit terms the "natural and imprescriptible" rights of the child. At present, the Government asserts that children implicitly enjoy these rights. They argue that the proposed change will merely make this state of affairs clearer.

The amendment will also propose changing the wording of Article 42.5, the constitutional provision relating to State intervention in families where children are considered to be at risk. The reworded article would allow for the State to used "appropriate and proportionate means" to intervene in a family where parents of "any child" have failed in their duty towards that child.

Currently, the Article reads; “In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child.” The new provision would alter this, adding the the words “and proportionate” to the word appropriate. Furthermore, the new provision would apply to “any child”.

A number of changes in the area of adoption are also proposed by the wording. An express constitutional provision permitting the adoption of children in long-term care under a court order is set to be included as part of the package.

Furthermore, current practice makes it very difficult to adopt of a child born into a marital family. (Abandonment must be demonstrated). The proposed change would make it no more and no less difficult to adopt a child from a marital family than it is to adopt a child from a non-marital family.

The final wording is due to go to Cabinet next week, following consultations with Opposition parties and other interested organisations. If the wording is approved by the Cabinet, a referendum is likely to be held in the first week of April.

At this stage it is unclear whether the Government will secure all-party consensus on the planned referendum, or if the changes will go far enough to satisfy children's rights groups.

A French politician has been fined almost $4,000 under a French law against inciting hatred against minorities.

A rise in the number of children living without their fathers has led to a sharp increase in youth suicide in Ecuador, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Archbishop of Westminister, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, has accused the Labour Government of imposing “a new morality”.

UK Cabinet ministers have poured cold water over suggestions that Catholic Church adoption agencies might be exempted from new legislation requiring them to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents.

An overwhelming majority of Irish people oppose a recent proposal to lower the age of consent for sexual activity to 16, according to a new opinion poll. The poll, published in the Sunday Tribune, showed that a massive 68 per cent of people are opposed to the proposal.

Senior Church of England bishops last night added their weight to Catholic opposition to legislation requiring religious adoption agencies in Britain to consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents. The head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York said that "the rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well meaning".

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has cited the recent Iona Institute poll on marriage and the family to back claims that many Europeans, the Irish included still back traditional values.