Two years ago tomorrow this Bill was published, having been given its First Reading by the Seanad on 17th December, 1974. Now the subject of family planning is to be debated again. Since the Bill was introduced, two of its sponsors, Senator John Horgan and myself, have moved to the Labour benches and have taken the Labour Whip. The third sponsor, Senator Trevor West, remains on the Independent benches and the Bill is being moved and will be debated as a Private Members' Bill.
However, I am deeply conscious of the fact that it would not be debated in this House unless one political party, the Labour Party, had been prepared to assume their responsibility and to support the debate on family planning. It would not be debated unless the Leader of that party, the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, had been prepared to come into this House to listen to the debate and to intervene in due course, having heard the views of a sufficient number of Senators to assess the attitude of the House to the legislation of various methods of family planning and access to information on that subject.
I welcome the Minister and I thank him for providing this opportunity. I am aware that he may not agree with all the provisions of the Bill, but he is the Leader of the only political party in this State which have taken an unequivocal stand on reform of the law in the area. I am confident that this measure, perhaps with amendments will provide a framework for reforming the law. There are only a limited number of ways in which the law can be changed. The Bill attempts to achieve a balance in securing the objectives of liberalising the right to family planning and to access to information whilst, at the same time, providing control of the manufacture, of the sale, and of the advertising of contraceptives.
I should like to turn briefly to the legislative record in relation to the sale, advertising and availability of information about contraceptives. Over 40 years ago, a Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill was passed by the Parliament of the Free State, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 1935. It included a section, section 17, prohibiting the sale, offering for sale, advertising or importation of contraceptives. Despite the changes in Irish life, the changes in social attitudes, the growth in urbanisation, the very different texture of Irish life since 40 years ago, there has been no successful reform of that original measure.
In recent years there have been several attempts. In 1970, the first measure, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 1970, was placed on the Order Paper of this House by Senator John Horgan, Senator Trevor West and myself. In July, 1971, the First Stage was moved by the then Leader of the House, Senator Mullins, and the Bill was defeated on a vote. The effect of that was that it was refused a First Reading and was never published. An identically worded Bill was introduced in the Dáil by Deputy Noel Browne and Deputy John O'Connell where it too was opposed at First Stage and was defeated on a vote in February, 1972. The net effect of that was that both Houses of the Oireachtas refused even to publish the text of a Bill to amend the law, much less debate its proposals.
A second Private Members' Bill, the Family Planning Bill, 1973, got a Second Reading in the Seanad. That debate stands on its merits as the first serious attempt by the Oireachtas to debate the subject of family planning, but the Bill was defeated on a vote in March, 1974, after the publication of the Coalition Government's measure, The Control of Importation, Sale and Manufacture of Contraceptives Bill, 1974. The defeat of that Bill in the Dáil in July, 1974, provided the unique spectacle of the Taoiseach and the then Minister for Education voting against a Government Bill.
Now we come to consider the present measure. It is the third Private Members' Bill and was given its First Reading in December, 1974. It proposes a different way of changing the law from any of the original proposals. It tries to provide a balance —it might be called a compromise— between the two objectives, on the one hand the liberalising of the law in order to promote the right to family planning, the right to information, a right recognised and endorsed by the Supreme Court in the McGee case, and at the same time to provide control in the public interest, a control which does not exist in present circumstances and which can be argued to be necessary.
When the previous debate took place in this House on family planning on the Second Stage of the Family Planning Bill, 1973, I made an appeal to Members of the House. The debate took place on the 20th February, 1974, and I said at column 205 of the Official Report:
I should like to appeal to my fellow Senators; let us approach this subject with compassion rather than dogmatism and with open-minded concern rather than bigotry. Family planning involves the most intimate relationship between a man and a woman. It is a subject matter which has been discussed very broadly outside Parliament in recent times. It is also a subject which was taboo for discussion for a very long time. It is now to be debated inside Parliament.
It was debated on several sitting days of the Seanad around that time and 13 Senators contributed to the debate. In my opinion that debate provided a serious and thoughtful attempt to view the complexities of the whole problem. The complexities arise not least from the fact that the matter has been regulated by the criminal law and has continued to be regulated for the past 42 years by the criminal law. It is always much more difficult for a society to move from a position of regulation by the criminal law to a position of legalisation. It is difficult not only for Members of this House, but also for the public, to separate in their minds the very different concepts of legalising something and approving of it for their own personal conduct or approving of it as a concept or as an idea.
From the very beginning of this debate I should like to draw that distinction. I should like to draw a clear distinction between legalising the sale and advertising and availability under control of contraceptives and approving of the use of contraceptives. Nobody in this House who voted for a reform and change of the law would be going the step further by doing that and approving of the use. Senators could continue to differ very sharply and very deeply and conscientiously and for very strong and deeply felt reasons on whether it was right to use artificial means of contraception.
What is proposed in this House today in this Bill must be understood precisely. The proposal is to legalise the availability of contraceptives in order to allow people to exercise the right identified and recognised by the Supreme Court in the McGee case, and to provide access to information so that citizens can inform themselves responsibly. It is an enabling measure. It is a legalising measure. It does not necessarily bind any Senators who vote for it to approval of the exercise of any means of family planning. That is a matter of individual choice, a matter of individual conscience, a matter of personal responsibility for the citizens.
On the last occasion when there was a debate in this House, there was only one contribution from the Fianna Fáil group. The spokesman on that occasion was the Leader of the Fianna Fáil group, Senator Lenihan. In the course of a brief intervention he said at column 293 of the Official Report for 21st February, 1974:
Our view is that a Government Bill covering the various aspects of this matter arising out of the Supreme Court decision should be published immediately. We will deal with and meet in a very sensible and constructive way whatever Bill is furnished by the Government to the Oireachtas.
Indeed, it is not an unfair characterisation of Senator Lenihan's contribution to that debate to say he did not address himself at all to the Family Planning Bill, 1973, before the House. He made the point, and made it in several different ways in his brief intervention that it was up to the Government to bring in a measure and that Fianna Fáil would react constructively to that situation.
In fact, as Members of this House well know, the Government did decide to publish a Bill and this Bill was in fact published before the debate had concluded in the Seanad on the Family Planning Bill, 1973. As a result, the debate on that Bill fizzled out in the Seanad. The Bill was ordered on the day the Government measure was published, and it was defeated on a vote on 27th of March, 1974, by 32 votes to 10.
I submit that today the situation is very different. Every Member of the House is aware of what happened to that Government Bill. I have already mentioned that it was defeated in the Dáil and that the Taoiseach and the then Minister for Education, and some other Members of the Fine Gael Party, joined the Fianna Fáil Party in opposing it. That is the political reality. Despite the fact that a considerable majority of Senators and Deputies have expressed the private view that the law should be changed, there appears to be a situation of stalemate. Worse than that, the subject has become a political football which is tossed around to gain cheap political advantage without any serious concern to remedy the situation. I submit there is a responsibility on the Members of this House today to break out of that stalemate, to stop regarding the issue of family planning in Ireland as a political football.
I submit that the situation has changed radically from the position in early 1974. There is no prospect of a Government Bill at present. That is a political fact. But there is a problem. There is a need to change the law. So how can the Members of this House address themselves with concern and with seriousness of purpose to that problem? How do we get the law changed? I would submit that, if Members of this House regard the Bill before them today as a reasonable measure for changing the law, as a balanced measure, as a serious proposal and appropriate framework for changing the law, then we have a responsibility we cannot evade.
We cannot play cheap political games with it. It cannot be used as a way of embarrassing the Labour Party, who are prepared to take a stand on the matter. It cannot be used to drive a wedge between the parties in Coalition because all of this will not fool the Irish public. It will not fool the women of Ireland. It will not fool the young people. They are sufficiently intelligent to see such tactics for what they are, and are becoming very cynical about the operations of political parties when it comes down to playing cheap political games of that sort.
There is no Government Bill in prospect, but there is a serious proposal to change the law. It must be remembered that the debate today is a debate on the general provisions of the Bill, a Second Reading. The proposals in the Bill are open to reasonable amendment. The Bill can and indeed should be improved in its passage through the Seanad. There is no suggestion that the proposals in this Bill are immutable, that it is in some way a fixed, inflexible measure which cannot be changed. Indeed, that is not even the democratic reality. The proposals in this Bill are in the hands of this House. It is this House which will determine how the Bill is debated and what progress it makes, what amendments may be made to it, whether it becomes an instrument of changing and reforming the law, correcting an unacceptable and unjustifiable situation.
What is the factual background and reality of the situation? Since the Supreme Court judgement in the McGee case, any person in Ireland, of any age, and whether married or not, can import contraceptives for private use. They cannot, however, inform themselves about the different methods of family planning because of the provisions of the Censorship of Publications Acts, 1929 and 1946. The result is that there is, in one sense, too much freedom to import without any responsible control—responsible in the sense of responsible information about use. This aspect is very much a reality at the moment, because in July of this year notification was sent to the deputy president of the students union in Trinity College informing him that 36 booklets were withdrawn from a parcel he had ordered because their importation into Ireland was prohibited under the Censorship of Publications Acts 1929 to 1967.
The books in question were 30 copies of a booklet called "Planning with Discretion" and six copies of a booklet called "Manual of Family Planning" by Dr. Eleanor Mears. This latter booklet, which is published by Syntex Information Service for the medical and allied professions, is a standard educational reference for English schools and is available in many of these schools for students in their final years. It is regarded as a balanced educational booklet for school leavers in England. These school leavers, of course, have access to contraceptives where the sale is not illegal. The whole climate in that country is sufficiently different for me not to want to pursue simplistic comparisons with the situation in England.
The reality in Ireland is that young people of 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 years of age can import contraceptives, can use contraceptives, but they cannot get information to inform themselves about them, to inform themselves about the risks, to inform themselves about the health aspects, to come to a responsible decision. I regard that as being a totally unacceptable and urgent situation. I regard it as a situation which should unite Senators on both sides of the debate on this matter. It should be of concern to those who want control and regulation in relation to contraceptives, as much as to those who want more liberal access including access to information, because the present situation is the worst of both worlds. It is a totally unacceptable situation to responsible members of political parties and, for that reason, I hope we will concern ourselves with the realities of what is happening in Ireland.
There was a decision by the Censorship of Publications Board in November, 1976, banning the family planning booklets issued by the Irish Family Planning Association on the grounds that they were deemed to be indecent or obscene. Since I am professionally retained in that case, and since legal proceedings are issuing, I do not wish to make any comment on that particular matter.
I should like now to refer to some statistics of the practical need which is felt by Irish citizens for access to family planning advice and access to family planning services. As Members of the House know, there are now several family planning clinics operating in Ireland. There are two clinics in Dublin, one in Synge Street and one in Mountjoy Square. There is a clinic in Tuckey Street in Cork. There is one in Navan, one in Limerick and I understand one is about to open in Galway.