upper house

But she needed a runoff to prevail in the upper house after falling just short of a majority in the first vote.

Then it lost its majority in the upper house in July, amid public anger after a fundraising scandal.

There are 174 members of the Dáil and another 60 Senators in the upper house, Seanad Éireann.

But Falconer, who is sponsoring the bill in the Lords, has urged his colleagues respect the convention that laws backed by MPs are not blocked in the Upper House.

Japan is currently seeing a drift towards the far-right, with the nationalist Sanseito emerging as one of the biggest winners of Japan's recent upper house parliamentary election.