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GOVERNMENT MINISTERS have approved the creation of new laws which will end the practice of awarding lump sums to people who sustain major injuries as a result of the negligence of others.
The Cabinet has approved the creation of new legislation which would replace the single lump sum awards with periodic payment orders which should better reflect the true cost of treatment that someone may need.
“The danger of the lump sum approach, which is the current method of assessing damages in such cases, is that it can lead to situations where a person is over-compensated or under-compensated,” justice minister Alan Shatter said.
The minister said there had been significant debate over how to gauge an appropriate sum to be awarded by the courts, particularly given circumstances where it was difficult to ascertain a person’s future circumstances or the level of care they could need.
Shatter argued that previous lump sum system meant that some people who won lump sums in court would exhaust their funds because of advances in medical science, which meant they lived longer, while in other cases plaintiffs died early leaving their families with a large windfall.
“I believe that the introduction of an appropriate and effective scheme of periodic payment orders will address this issue and will further the interests of justice,” he said.
The minister said while there was never any issue involving the State, which would always be in a position to meet any payout asked of it, a new financial system would be needed to ensure that parties continued to pay out in line with court orders without exposing the State to any financial risk.
The new rules will be contained in a Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill which will now begin drafting, with a general scheme to be published in due course.
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Correct. Especially the catholic church. Stephen Fry famously compared the churches obsession with sex/sexuality to bulimics and the morbidly obese’s obsession with food.
And he’s not wrong.
@The Risen: body shaming? Really??
@Rodney Pickering: how are able to read body shaming into that? I’m obese and I’m obsessed with food. The comment does not shame me; it tells the truth.
@Michael Lang: bulimia is a serious EO and not something to be trivialised and joked about online.
@Rodney Pickering: it wasn’t being trivialised or joked about. What was mentioned was a Stephen Fry quote, originally used as a serious analogy during an IQ2 debate about whether the Catholic Church is a force for good. Fry makes a critical and important point of the relationship between sex and religion touching upon the Catholic church’s view of sin and love. If you have not watched it I implore you to do so.
@Michael Lang: Shame on you, despicable.
@Rodney Pickering: Oh look, another 2 hour old facebook account trying it on.
@Rodney Pickering: then you should take your own direction and stop trivializing these issues.
@Thought Criminal: I feel no shame. Imagine if I had your criminal thoughts. Now that would be shameful.
@Michael Lang: Were you not even ashamed after your Tony Daly account got banned for laughing at innocent people being burned alive in a church?
@Michael Lang: are you really obese Tony, or are you just inventing bollox again?
@Michael Knight: yes, I’m obese as confirmed by my GP. I out on massive weight after a very bad traffic accident, now that I’m on a weight reduction programme, food tends to occupy my mind.
@Criminal Thoughts: take that up with Tony Daly.
@Michael Lang: I just did.
@Michael Lang: why did you get rid of your Fiona de freyne profile?
@Rodney Pickering: you’re not very good at trolling are you?
@Michael Lang: ignore idiots ignorance
@The Risen: If you don’t want the church involved in any aspect of your child’s education, send them to a none catholic/religious school. No need to be slating christian beliefs cause believe me whats pouring into Ireland/Euro they will ram there beliefs and way of life down our throat than you will see..
@Jonathan Whelan: ‘ If you don’t want the church involved in any aspect of your child’s education, send them to a none catholic/religious school.’
I did. Unfortunately, over 90% of schools in the state have a Catholic ethos so it’s not an option for many parents.
@The Risen: seems Jonathan is not great at maths, odd that.
A large cult of dress wearing mainly gay men teaching our children about sex. bizarre.
@Derek Moran: if it was only “teaching”, that would be one thing.
@Derek Moran: should we be worried about gay or trans men in education? Strange comment.
@Rodney Pickering: its what certain Roman Catholic clerics who are neither gay nor trans might want to do with children unless very closely supervised.
@Derek Moran: what bizarre is people with a high degree of emotional, social and intellectual nous still believe that young people are so stupid they can’t see through religious indoctrination and crack pot politicians and social media commentators.
The world is a free for all and no educational programs will stop the tide of hedonism and free will.
The days of telling the boys club mentality !!!! And YES the girls club mentality!!!! Which some would wants us believe does not exist how to conduct themselves in private or in public is wishful thinking.
I won’t be alive but what will our children blame for their non directional subjective hedonism where there is no objective wrong only act in the moment and blame who ????
@Rodney Pickering: yeah i meant to say closeted gay men that deny their sexuality. pity you can’t edit comments.
No outside vested interests pushing their own agendas should be involved in such a delciate matter, be they the Catholic Church or LGBTQ+ activist groups.
@Rodney Pickering: a child would be safer listening to representatives of LGBTQ than spending time with certain Roman Catholic Church priests.
@Michael Lang: And a child would be safer listening to representatives of the Catholic Church than certain LQBTQ people.
@Michael Lang: many of the peadophile priests you are referencing are also LGBTQ+.
@Pat Baitman, it’s not the gay Priests I would be worried about. It is the Priests who are attracted to children I worry about.
@Michael Lang: Why would they?
@Rodney Pickering: there are gay priests and there are child loving priests. These are separate categories. Their point in common is their religion and their status as priests but not their sexual proclivities.
@Rodney Pickering: having a sexual preference for members of your own sex is hardly comparable with having a sexual preference for children.
@Karen Wellington: exactly but Pat and Rodney don’t or won’t understand that.
@Michael Lang: I’d be worried about any adult attracted to children, regardless of their occupation
@Pat Baitman, of course you would but Roman Catholic Priests teaching sex education to children could use that role to manipulate and to gain access to children.
Keep the Priests well away from children is the safest approach. Better to be sure than sorry.
@Karen Wellington: most of the perpetrators were gay peadophiles who targeted boys not girls.
@Michael Lang: I don’t want any man or woman from any organisation, with the exception of perhaps a garda vetted teacher, teaching children about sex
@Rodney Pickering: was that not more an issue of access? Young boys being placed in the care of priests while young girls were in the care of the nuns (who went in for different forms of abuse)?
@Rodney Pickering: being gay isn’t synonymous with peadophilia, if you don’t already know that you probably need some form of RSE
@Karen Wellington: no it was a reflection of the level of closeted homosexuality in the Church, many (not all) joined for easy access to defencless males. I am not saying being gay is synonymous with peadophilia but nor to is priesthood.
@Rodney Pickering: no, you seem to be equating the systemic cover-up of institutional abuses by the Catholic Church to the LGBTQ+ community. I’m sure the LGBTQ+ community have their fair share of vile deviants but you can hardly accuse them of protecting peadophiles by moving them from parish to parish and intimidating victims to keep their silence.
@Michael Lang: Historically…the same thing!
@Karen Wellington: Pederasty or homosexual activities between a man and boy, is the most common form of homosexuality throughout history. Most “gay rights” groups today still harbor many pedophile groups within their ranks!
I questioned this very issue with a nun in school.
My ears were ringing for a goot three quarters of an hour afterwards.
“Sorry Sister Josephine, but what knowledge would a nun have in relation to sex”
Ouch, I can still hear the clatter.
@Trevor Hayden: Exactly, any advocacy groups, special interest groups or lobby groups shouldn’t be allowed inside school gates. I’d go so far as asking them to sign a disclaimer, if they’re later found to be dishonest their group should automatically incur substantial financial penalties.
Let’s face it, this will by it’s nature have to involve talking about various forms of contraception, possibly a very basic demonstration of a condom. I understand this is such a common practice in Scandinavian countries that by the time they’re teenagers most kids there are familiar with them and any embarrassment has disappeared.
There will also have to be honest, open and frank discussions with other topics like abortion, homosexuality, porn, multiple partners, etc. If these can’t be discussed with children in a non-judgemental and truthful way then the person in question isn’t suitable.
That’s not to say the same conversations can be had with all children, I don’t think it would be appropriate to discuss the various forms of contraception available and the rights and wrongs of condoms with a 9 year old and a 14 year old. Although only 5 years in the difference, they’re worlds apart, and the same program wouldn’t apply to both.
It’s also very disturbing to notice that this has only been announced barely a day and already a number of ‘interest groups’ and ‘advocacy groups’ have made representations to be involved in it. One didn’t even hide her social media advocacy associations, her presentation clearly indicating males 8 times, females… none. If this is what’s happening overtly we can only imagine what’s going on behind the scenes, discretely. Either there’s a lot of money at stake, or access to impressionable young minds is worth it’s own weight in gold. As long as that access isn’t auctioned off to the highest bidder…
@Trevor Hayden: ha ha
@Trevor Hayden: to be fair, many nuns would be well able to discuss sex. With other women.
But who will teach the young kids about guilt, abstinence and repression?
@MK76: Don’t worry, the identity politics crowd have guilt and repression covered, while abstinence will be handled by the same militant feminists who allied with the Church to drive the sex trade underground.
Apart from probably using the Lords name in vain a bit, I don’t think sex has a whole lot to do with religion.
@Féach News: If you said that an Imam’s life revolved around covering up for grooming gangs or child murdering jihadists, you’d be banned from this site at superlumninal speed. The double standards on this forum are unbelievable.
Note to the journal, I am not saying that about Imams, it’s a hypothetical. Sad that I feel the need to add that qualifier.
@Thought Criminal: Roman Catholic Priests don’t have a monopoly on child abuse but their track record puts them in a prominent position.
@Michael Lang: Adherents of Islam don’t have a monopoly on terrorism or grooming gangs, but their track record puts them in a prominent position.
If your statement isn’t bigoted, then neither is mine.
Sex is a biological and social thing. Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Young people need to learn how it works biologically and the consequences (pregnancy, STD’s) and about consent. Deciding whether to do it by the rules of a religion is a private and personal thing and should be left outside of schools. You can’t tell someone they have to abstain from sex. Young people should decide on their own and be thought how to do it safely and consensually
@Orla van der Noll: sound sense.
@Orla van der Noll:
“Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it”.
Complete and utter tosh. If we are all just evolved animals what has consent got to do with anything? Without the existence of God there are no objective moral values. “You can’t tell someone they have to abstain from sex”!. The only way sure proof way to prevent the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases as well as unwanted pregnancies IS to abstain from sex. That’s just the reality for which most liberal air heads have still yet to figure out!
Absolutely. No ideologues should have any input. That includes the current non religious ideologues trying to get in the door.
@Conor Jugh: what are the non religious ideologies you’re talking about?
@Conor Jugh: good of you to accept that Roman Catholic Church ethos and representatives are ideological.
Religious groups should not be involved in public schools full stop.
The Vatican has developed a new low-fat communion wafer.
It is to be called I Can’t Believe It’s Not Jesus.
@PV Nevin: How many communion wafers would you have to eat before you’ve eaten a whole Jesus ?
@Vigo the Carpathian: it depends on whether it was before or after the 40 days in the desert.
@Michael Lang:
The Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes wasn’t any such thing. It was tapas.
I went to a christian brothers school in the 70′s , i dont think anyone was thought sex education .
But i’m quite sure it was the first time some of the guys had a sexual encounter , of the wrong kind .
Can somebody please tell me what level of support Ruth and her party get, not mine for sure, 1 or two percent maybe, their views matter little to the most of us.
@Charles Coughlan: about 1-2 percent based on polls. However, they get at least a 20% portion of airtime which is grossly unbalanced. On a typical 5 member panel in RTÉ or tv3, there will be at least 1 member of pbp/aaa. Fine Gael have about 15 times more support but they will also have just one member usually. Go figure.
I’m in Leaving Cert and last year my religion said she “had” to do RSE with us and she literally spent two max three classes making us do worksheets about what makes a good friend and how to tell if someone’s a good friend. Truly enlightening to say the least.
@Gemma: I got one day of sex Ed by an amazing teacher in sixth class and zero in secondary school!
But are there not some Roman Catholic clerics who have actual expertise and experience with children and sex?
@Michael Lang: ouch!!
@Rodney Pickering: David Norris is neither Catholic nor a Priest and he does not teach religion or sex education to young children. He is not a risk factor.
@Michael Lang: he is an advocate of pederasty.
@Rodney Pickering: I have to take you word for that. You know more about him than I do but he does not teach children does he? We are addressing the role of religion in sex education.
It is not about the catholic church. It us about moral values; values held by people of all religions and no religion. It is about self respect.
Do we want our children to learn that sex is a commodity like alchohol or choclate? Most parents- of any age, or moral philosophy- would like to teach their children that sex is not something to be given lightly.
Promiscuity is hardly a badge of honour.
It is easy to lose your good name, but nigh impossible to get it back.
Perhaps a word like ‘slut’ (their is no male equivalent) is now outdated in the same way as ‘buggery’ is; but they are still words in the Oxford english dictionary, and we all know what they mean.
@Pat Bradford: religion is not the only or even a real source of such values or even a good example.
@Pat Bradford: the thing about sex is it is a choice, nothing to do with a commodity, but simply a pleasure. It makes no difference if it is in a long term relationship or not and if you are still of the mindset of losing a “good name”, then a good sex education is wasted on you. I want my daughter to be taught that sex is as pleasurable for a woman as a man, that she has every right to express herself in whatever way she chooses. I want her education to emancipate her from the cultural baggage we have been left with, confident, that not only is she maturing, but so is Irish society. If you don’t want that for your children, fine, but let them sit at the back of the class like my children have to for religious instruction. See how you like that.
@Pat Bradford: I’d rather be teach my children to be happy, and enjoy life than to care about a ‘good name’ – whatever that even means….
@Pat Bradford: you need to listen to the Second Captains broadcast about sex. It’s a real eye opener. The only place kids are really learning about sex is from porn. We must do better.
No religious should be involved and no other ideologues either, especially feminists with their vile misandrist views.
@Frank McGlynn: feminists might be well placed to point out the dangers posed by a small minority of men and to teach the notion of consent. The Roman Catholic Church has a poor track record on teaching and practising consent.
@Frank McGlynn: well the only thing teaching the kids now is porn and that’s totally unrealistic. Feminists would teach consent, valuing someone, that looking different is fine and can also be quite sexy. How that’s misandrist I wouldn’t know but I would prefer a male and female approach as well.
Teaching science and biology for 8 years in a few schools. No one has ever interfered with my honest teaching of the facts! This is overlooked in the sensationalist articles I’m reading of late.
I think the role of parents is overlooked here! Teachers cannot do it all, if we could, we would go into houses every evening and disconnect the wifi. That would make our jobs a lot easier day to day.
If the religious pupils want to opt out of proper (non religious) sex education, fine, but make them sit at the back of the classroom colouring in, with no headphones or any other distractions. See how they like them apples.
@Paul Fahey: isolating and otherising children is fine once they’re the right type of children.
@Rodney Pickering: is it isolating if they have to stay with the group? Ostracising (if that is what you meant) suggests the main group chose not to include the religious-objectors, rather than them opting out by their own choice.
@Paul Fahey: we don’t have a choice to opt out of science class so I don’t know if we should be given a choice to opt out of sex ed. There’s the biological side to sex ed and the other side is simply informing people about sexuality in general – if it were to be void of religious influence then no one should have any reason to not want to be in the classroom. It doesnt matter if parents don’t want their children to have an abortion etc. There’s no reason to remain ignorant. In fact knowing more about sex would make people feel more confident in their choice to abstain anyway .
@Emily Barry: I was being facetious, but let’s be honest, the Irish education system promotes ignorance and my children have to sit at the back of the class listening to it.
It’s all beginning to sound like US foreign policy. Let them have free elections as long as they vote for the party of our choice.
The attraction of formal religion to sex is that it is a powerful means of controlling the flock.
@Michael Lang: The attraction of doctrinal, dogmatic ideologies like feminism and identity politics to sex, is that it is a powerful means of controlling the flock.
Old wine, new bottles is all.
“Teach Don’t Preach” Yeah right! Secularists act like they’re neutral but their Marxist agenda is just as radical as 1950s Catholicism, trying to shove their “gender issues”, LGBTQXYZ, abortion, and free sex philosophy etc. etc. down children’s throats.
@Ireland Needs God:
Be alert! Ireland needs lerts.
@Ireland Needs God: the people running around practicing and partaking in the free sex philosophy look 100 times happier than the people who choose religious abstinence…just saying
@Annemarie Dunne: do you ask everybody you see every day what religious/ political/philosophical grouping they belong to? If you don’t then it’s ridiculous to make a comment such as yours.
Funnily enough just reading John McGahern’s Memoir .
“Because of the power of the Church ………many married without any sexual knowledge or knowledge of the person they were marrying……the result was usually the arrival of a large number of children in rapid succession.”
“There were families in which the children were cherished,but many more where they were resented as unwanted mouths that had to be fed,the unpleasant and unavoidable results of desire .”
I know things have changed but surely the attitudes that led to such unhappiness should be permanently discarded ?
Is it not for parents, rather than politicians, to teach their children morals?
Sex has become so complicated your average buachaill and cailin will be lost with Ruthie’s curriculum. They’d be better off learning how to milk a bull.
@Martello Mulligan: you must be doing it wrong, because it is still the same for me, but you crack on with that bull, but wear goggles whatever you do.
@Martello Mulligan: She will have them teaching the boys to wear make up and dresses.
@Rodney Pickering: please fk off you complete kûnt.
@Ian Walsh: simply mute all of those type accounts and the noise go’s away for a while… just a while anyway.
Its honestly not worth worrying about loosing the direction of a thread when half the comments are muted. You’d be surprised, the decent comments still filter through and speeds up browsing as you pick up from the replies the muted comments added nothing to the conversation and you can scroll on. The sites plagued with trolls, cranks, idiots, the deluded and shills with some all rolled into one. Very few add any substantial value.
Why does this need to be the subject of legislation to change? Is that a stallking tactic? Surely policy could be altered immediatley?
“Those who can’t, teach”…
Seriously though… you wouldn’t expect it for most other topics. Imagine Jehovah’s Witnesses teaching medicine, Ultra-Orthodox Jews teaching electronic engineering, or Scientologists teaching psychiatry.
Religion must be removed completely, 100%, from any role in the state. No role or position, no funds, no platform, no voice.
@PV Nevin: Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that that would mean the State would directly reflect your own religious beliefs, opinions and world view…
It would be helpful to have people who have a healthy love of sex teach children about sex. My memory is of a teacher who ought to have been a nun, but was most likely a virgin, explain the very basics through pursed lips. Ridiculous.
@Margaret Brennan: agreed Margaret. They would not let atheists lead them in prayer, so…..
Religion has caused nearly every conflict in our history they should not be allowed be involved in feck all
@Mark Dawson: The three biggest conflicts in human history where not religiously inspired. WWI, WWII and the Cold War were all ideologically inspired and not a hint of religion to them. #Justsayin
@Andrew Eager: Its pointless educating brain dead bigots with some alternative agenda!
@Andrew Eager: Hitler was a man who took solace in religious faith – a faith that he understood as Catholic. Catholics ignore that. Some go on as if as long as he were not Jesus or pope or a priest that he does not reflect on the religion! But even if he were that would not change their minds about the religion’s role in his evil. And besides what he was is immaterial for the Church says that if Hitler was a Catholic then he enjoyed equality as a member of the faith with the pope.
James Waller wrote that instead of blaming Hitler and others for the Nazi Holocaust we need to remember that the ordinary people helped them carry it out and enabled it. Ordinary people can be as bad as sociopaths. You can be nice and kind and charming and still go and empower somebody to murder babies.
Hitler and Stalin are put forward as examples of the evil that can take place if an atheist rises to power. It is not admitted however that Hitler was devout in his own way to the end and that both he and Stalin recognised religious freedom and secular values but did not live up to them.
The 1920 book, My New Order by Adolf Hitler long before he could imagine any chance at changing Germany never mind controlling it shows how he felt inspired by the Bible story of Jesus vandalising the Jewish Temple (unsurprisingly). “My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison! Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.” This is a man who is confident that the flock tend to follow religion to some degree or another regardless of how evil or deceitful it is and especially when the target of hate and violence is another religion or a group of heretics.
Did Christianity give Hitler an excuse to persecute Jews? If it did it is still to blame for what he did for it is wrong to give the corrupt an excuse.
“Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … years.”
- Adolf Hitler as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pg. 871-872.
I am both an RE and SPHE teacher, previously worked in two Catholic schools and now a mixed ETB. At none of these schools was an outsider source brought in to teach ‘sex ed’. It’s actually always brought up on training days that it is much better practice for it to be done by a class teacher. In none of these schools was ‘sex ed’ ever taught in religion but actually through SHE and is correctly know as RSE ( RELATIONSHIP AND SEXUALITY EDUCATION). The only time I have heard of an outside religious source coming into school to teach RSE was from an rural school and nearly 10 years ago.
@Ton Smith: On the other hand Bruton is also bringing in these new ‘changes’ to the curriculum so that it updated, but in fact on reading these changes he intends to make most of the ideas such as consent is already being taught. Some changes I agree should be made to the curriculum to help modernise it such as along the technology aspect but most teachers who are average at best adapt these ideas into their lessons and cover these areas.
@Ton Smith: I went to s Christian brothers school and sex education was thought in biology class no way the brothers were touching the subject lol but was then very well approached I have to say well at least in my school
Well, that’s the missionary position screwed then.
Might be easier to just use external company to teach sex education in
Ffs, how about we just hire a team of gynecologists, urologists and psychiatrists to cover this subject?
You know, professionals who ACTUALLY know how a human body and mind works?
Whatever about the Catholic church or any other religious institution, this motley crew of amoral communist degenerates need to be kept as far away from children as possible. Subjecting any child to their crass, hedonistic depravities is tantamount to abuse.
But God has made it really lovely :)
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