Proposals in the symphysiotomy redress scheme requiring victims accepting a payment to “indemnify and hold harmless” those responsible have been sharply criticised.

As a State, we are either unwilling or unable to face up to our past, and our shameful treatment of women, writes ConallÓ Fátharta

If ever there was a tipping point in the national historic drama of Irish abortion laws, this latest horror is it, writes Rachel Doyle

The UN Human Rights Committee will tomorrow deliver its final verdict on Ireland’s human rights record in light of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which the State ratified in 1989.

THERE were two hearings last week about one Ireland. Both told plenty about who we are and how we are governed, and, not least of all, how we want to be governed.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald spoke this week before the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva about the "dreadful situation of the survivors of symphysiotomy".

AFTER the Nazi medical experiments on human beings, the Nuremberg code was drawn up to prevent such barbarity happening again. At its core was that anybody being subjected to medical experiments must give their consent.

The overwhelming reaction to the Department of Justice’s intergovernmental report on mother-and-baby homes was that it was too limited and would undermine the thoroughness of any subsequent inquiry.

Irish abortion law treats women as a vessel and nothing more, the UN’s human rights committee chair and former UN special rapporteur on torture told the Government.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald spoke this week before the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva about the "dreadful situation of the survivors of symphysiotomy".

The practice of breaking a woman’s pelvis during childbirth and preventing it from healing could well be considered a crime, the chair of the UN Human Rights committee has said.