Ireland

In this case, the three applicants were Irish residents, but had abortions in the United Kingdom because abortion was unlawful in Ireland. Two of the applicants sought abortions for health and/or wellbeing-related reasons, while the third applicant was unable to establish her eligibility for a lawful abortion in Ireland. The third applicant was in remission for cancer and, due to a lack of information on the impact of the pregnancy on her remission and the effect of her treatment on the pregnancy, sought the abortion because of the risks involved with the pregnancy.

C. was a 13 year-old girl who became pregnant as a result of rape allegedly by a family friend and was now in State care.  The health board sought a court order to allow her to travel outside the State to obtain an abortion because abortion was illegal in Ireland except where the pregnancy formed a real and substantial risk to the woman's life. The Court granted the health board's order permitting C. to travel outside the State to obtain an abortion.

The 2017 Act amends and extends the law in relation to the adoption of children and made conforming amendments to other legislation.  Among other things, the Act, in conjunction with the Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 (available here), enables adoption by same-sex couples. The Act, in particular, amends use of heterosexual phrases in legislation, introducing more neutral terminology for words such as “parent” and “relative” (Section 3).

X was a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant and suicidal after being raped.  Her parents tried to take her to England in order to obtain a first-trimester abortion that was illegal in Ireland, but the Attorney General obtained an interim injunction from the High Court restraining the girl and her parents from leaving the country for a period of nine months or from arranging an abortion for her.

Job-sharing was introduced into the Irish Civil Service in 1984. Job-sharers work half the number of hours of full-time workers and are paid the same hourly rate. The scale of annual incremental salary increases for job-sharers are parallel to that for full-time workers with each point on the job-sharers scale representing 50% of the corresponding point on the full-time scale. 98% of job-sharers in the Irish Civil Service are women. According to the national referring tribunal a job-sharer can acquire the same experience as a full-time worker.

The petitioner, a domestic violence survivor, could not find affordable legal assistance to appear before a court.  The Court ruled that member states must guarantee effective access to the courts, including access to counsel.

The 1998 Act prohibits trafficking of children for the purposes of sexual exploitation.

The Act provides for parentage in case of donor-assisted human reproduction (“DAHR”) (Part 2), issues relating to DAHR facilities (including acquisition of gametes by operators) (Part 3), and amendments to the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964 (Part 4), Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act 1976, the Status of Children Act 1987, Family Law Act 1995, and among other legislation, to reflect rights and responsibilities of spouses or civil partners of biological parents and to take into account DAHR situations.

The 2015 Act imposes certain reporting obligations on organizations and groups of professionals that provide ‘relevant services’ to children (listed in Schedule 1 of the Act).  The Act requires, inter alia, the provision of child safeguarding statements (Part 2), reporting by ‘mandated persons’ and ‘authorized persons’ (Part 3); and inter-departmental/sectoral implementation plans (e.g., information-sharing).  The legislation also abolishes the common-law defense of “reasonable chastisement.”  (Section 28).

The Civil Registration Act 2019 made technical amendments to the Civil Registration Act of 2004, the purposes of which were to facilitate legislation to provide for registration of the birth of donor-conceived children, and to enable both partners in a same-sex female relationship to have their details recorded in such registrations. Specifically, Section 10 provides for the recording of a ‘parent’s’ details and any parent may so register although the options of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are still available.