Speaker Anglu Farrugia assured parliament in a brief statement on Monday that the petitions system was working normally after some problems on Friday caused by a Google update.

Dr Farrugia was reacting to media reports that people had been unable to add their names to the petition on embryo protection.

He said that rather than problems in the past three weeks, as claimed, problems appeared to have developed last Friday when submissions could not be received  because of an update carried out by Google to its reCAPTCHA software, which is widely used to prevent spam submissions. 

These problems had now been ironed out and the petitions system was working normally on Monday, Dr Farrugia said.

The Speaker stressed that the petition may only be signed once. Some people had tried three or more times. They received one confirmation by e-mail and other e-mails telling them their additional submissions were rejected.

The petition, which was filed on April 3 by Emanuela Cachia, calls on MPs to ensure the Embryo Protection Act is not amended, saying plans to allow embryos to be frozen would violate the right to life.

On Sunday the NGO Gift of Life Foundation called on Speaker to launch an independent investigation into why the petition had become impossible to sign. 

It noted that although many had managed to sign the petition and it was commendable, it seemed that in the last three weeks, it had become utterly impossible to sign.