As Minister for Health in the late 1970s, Charles Haughey tried to restrict contraceptives to married couples by requiring a doctor’s prescription and sale through chemists. Half the country’s pharmacies announced that they would refuse to stock them while their representative body decided not to operate the law at all if family planning clinics were allowed sell them. Political Correspondent Dick Walsh summed up the state of the controversy in this report.
THE IRISH Pharmaceutical Union’s refusal to operate the Health (Family Planning) Act has all but wrecked Charles Haughey’s “Irish solution” to the political problem of contraception.
The union, on Wednesday night, announced that it would not operate the Act if the Minister allowed family planning clinics – non-pharmacists – to set up pharmacies and supply contraceptives.
To force the closure of the clinics now would be not only to give way to the union’s ultimatum but to incur the political wrath of the thousands who have been availing of their services. But if the clinics are not closed, the pharmacists say, they will not co-operate. And the Act will be ineffectual.
This, then, could be the opening of the final act in what a leading politician described last night as the longest-running farce in recent Irish politics.
The highlight of its first act was the decision of the former Taoiseach, Mr [Liam] Cosgrave, to cross the floor of the Dáil and vote with Fianna Fáil to defeat Paddy Cooney’s Bill in 1974.
Fianna Fáil, which made much of Mr Cosgrave’s vote, promised in its election manifesto [in 1977] “to ensure the widest possible acceptance of a positive policy for family planning and enact the necessary legislation”.
Mr Haughey began a series of meetings with representatives of the health boards and the hierarchy, among others, in the spring of 1978 and, when his Bill was published, in December, he called it an Irish solution to an Irish problem.
But it provided for sales to married people only and, even with this restriction, ran into difficulties in the Cabinet. The Minister for Agriculture, Mr [Jim] Gibbons, refused to support it and threatened to resign if he were forced into the Government lobby.
His refusal, when the second stage was taken by the Dáil, led to speculation that he would be expelled from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party and might have to leave the Government. In the event, he did neither.
After confrontations with the Taoiseach, Mr [Jack] Lynch, Mr Gibbons was allowed to exercise his conscience and refrain from supporting Mr Haughey’s measure which became law last month.
The Act is still open to challenge in the Supreme Court and more than ever vulnerable to the criticism that it is, in practice, unworkable and, in principle, unacceptable to very many citizens.
http://url.ie/70nj