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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 9 Feb 1977

Vol. 86 No. 2

Family Planning Bill, 1974: Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I made some general remarks on the Bill the last day. I started at a time when we were almost about to close and I cut off my little speech with ragged edges. Today I do not propose to delay the House much longer, but I have a few things to say to round out the ideas I was trying to convey the last day. I am glad to note at this stage that WHO are giving a grant to certain medical authorities here to make a scientific study of what is known as the Billings method of contraception. That is a good thing. Some Senators on the last day were making the case that the Billings method would cover practically every situation that anybody could imagine. I doubted this very much. However, I would be glad if there could be developed from that a perfect system of family planning.

I am glad also that this dialogue is taking place because it will help to clear a lot of the myths and misconceptions that exist in relation to the question of family planning. Everybody knows that lots of extraneous matters have been introduced. What we are talking about and what we were talking about is family planning for married people. Everybody, all the churches, recognise that the situation that has existed up to this is far from satisfactory. However, people, when emotionally posing arguments on this question, introduce other things that, while allied to it, are not actually connected with it. We hear people making declarations that if by any action of the Government contraceptives are introduced legally it will result in more permissiveness, in more sexual permissiveness, and, following on from that, that premarital promiscuity by teenagers would add to the appalling situation we appear to have, according to statistics, with regard to premarital sex, to adultery and abortion. From statistics published in the newspapers we realise that these things are being carried on to an extent that shocks all of us.

The introduction of these matters has caused confusion with regard to actual family planning. Planning is made necessary by the family circumstances, the health or ill-health of the mother, the number of children already in the home without sufficient wherewithal to raise them in a healthy manner, not enough funds to provide food and clothing, a husband who is a wife-basher or a mother whose psychiatric health is not sufficient to sustain the pressures that motherhood and the family impose on her. In all these cases there is a necessity for family planning.

There are many other factors involved in this and in the Bill but I do not intend to go into them. There are many Members competent to deal with all the legalities and illegalities and controls necessary by the Minister for Justice and by the Minister for Health. Those things can be trashed out during the debate. We want to make this a watertight Bill, one that will give the necessary opportunities and facilities for family planning but, at the same time, be able to control the channels through which the supply goes out to the people in need.

Nobody deplores as much as I the factors I was talking about earlier, but because there are some young children in the Gallery I will not pursue them now. I hope this debate will sort out from the things I was talking about the crooked and lopsided arguments posed by some people so that we will know exactly where we are going. Everybody knows that the statictics I was talking about are frightening. I do not know who is at fault. I saw statistics about the number of young women who had relationships, to their detriment, with married men they met in discos and dancehalls. The number is increasing annually. There was a discussion around a fireside in a house as to who was responsible, was it the married men who were responsible and what degree of responsibility rested with the young teenagers themselves? Was there something in their upbringing, was there something lacking in their religious education as well as their normal academic education that left these young girls a prey to the type of married individual who goes out to enjoy himself at night? What was the reason and who was at fault? These are questions the Church must be looking into. The educational authorities must also look into this. It appears from the statistics that it was not the poorer type of working class who were involved but people who came from the middle income groups who had plenty of money to spend— otherwise they would not be able to go to discos. They are some of the things we must take into account.

We all hear other statistics that are not published at all, the sordid back-street traffic in abortion that takes place in England and the number of women whose health is marred for a lifetime and, indeed, the number of deaths which occur every year from this sordid traffic. Why do we go into this thing? I am only trying to make the point that we will have to get the Family Planning Bill disassociated from this type of thing. Some people are making speeches and writing to the newspapers to the effect that if this Family Planning Bill is passed this outbreak of permissiveness will escalate to an extraordinary extent. I do not believe that for a moment and I do not think any sensible person does, but this argument is being used and it has to be killed.

I hope Fianna Fáil will decide to permit their Members take part in this debate and make their views known. To say one is going to vote against it and not give reasons is a failure in democracy. Fianna Fáil have people who are well able to make their point, who know everything connected with this Bill and it would be to the benefit of everybody here if they would take part in the debate.

We know that to many people even talk of family planning is disturbing. For practising and devoted Irish Catholics it is a disturbing question because of their upbringing, because of what they were taught on their mother's knee and because of what they learned in school. The question in the first instance is of mortal sin. I am not competent to go into this area. But then, when one leaves the realm of mortal sin aside, one comes down to the social evil and the fear that can be associated with family planning.

This is where people are disturbed in mind and conscience. Some people who belong to other religions are also disturbed as to whether or not it would increase or add to the social evils attached to sexual permissiveness. As legislators we have another duty. What are we going to do? Are we going to stand idly by and do nothing or play no part in this? The attitude of some people is "Yes, we have a problem all right. But if we do nothing it might go away, so we will just sit back quietly and let the hullabaloo go along." Is this a responsible attitude? I do not think it is, but it is there. There is another idea: "We have to be very careful; it could be politically unwise to get involved in this." Is this not shedding the responsibility a legislator has when there is a question as timely and as burning as this? He must, I submit, give it thought and make a decision.

I hope the debate will be conducted in a reasoned, clear and calm manner and that the arguments put up will help all of us to make up our own minds on this delicate question. I presume that by the time the debate ends and the Bill is amended and tightened to the best ability of everybody we will feel we have done something worthy, something that was necessary.

I welcome the opportunity to continue this debate and I should like to start off by paying tribute to Senator Lyons. I do not think anybody could have put the issue in a more straightforward way or faced up to this delicate and difficult problem more courageously, honestly or openly than Senator Lyons. That is what we expect from him and he has not disappointed us. As one of the sponsors of a number of Bills on this matter I feel I am getting to the position of continually repeating myself. Sometimes it is depressing but I believe the last debate we had on the previous Family Planning Bill, which Senators Robinson, Horgan and I sponsored, was a first-class one and it helped to bring this issue into the open and have it discussed dispassionately and honestly. Various points of view emerged and this debate will contribute to movement in this direction. Therefore, I am happy to speak again.

The crunch issue is the issue of separation of Church and State. It is a problem we face in more than one area here. It is also a problem that our fellow Irishmen in Northern Ireland have faced and still face. It comes up in a number of ways. Currently, we are discussing family planning and the availability of methods of contraception, but there are also the problems of marriage breakdowns, inter-denominational education, abortion and euthanasia. These problems have to be faced up to and dealt with. I should like to make it clear that they are not interconnected. This was put extremely well by Senator Alexis FitzGerald in his speech reported at column 1151 of the Official Report where he spoke about the domino theory referred to by Senator Michael O'Higgins. Senator O'Higgins put forward the view that once one dealt with one of these problems the floodgates would be open and, as Senator Lyons said so ably, the permissive society would be here with all its unpleasant and unfortunate manifestations. Senator Alexis FitzGerald said:

With regard to the domino theory my answer to Senator O'Higgins on that is that we will deal with each of these issues as they come up. We are a rational people and capable of making the necessary distinctions.

That is exactly my view. There are other problems. There is no point in saying there are not because there are, but let us deal with them one at a time. Let us take each issue as it arises, take each issue separately and make the decision that is in the best interest of the people of this country who have elected us and whom we represent.

I should also like to say that I do not believe the attitude taken by the main Opposition group is the one they should take if they are behaving responsibly. The only Member of that group to speak was Senator W. Ryan, and in his short speech he did not make clear what the Fianna Fáil attitude explicitly was. I am not clear from what he said whether Fianna Fáil are abstaining or are opposing this Bill. Both approaches would be wrong and I ask them to reconsider.

I ask them, and the House, to recall that, precisely because of the delicate nature of this particular problem which involves intimate relationships between people of opposite sexes none of the parties in this State initially grasped the nettle; the nettle was grasped by the Independent Members, the University Members. They deserve credit for that. However, rather than pat myself on the back, I should like to say that that is their particular function. They can talk, discuss and raise issues of this nature. They can put them forward in an absolutely non-partisan way.

It happens that I am now the only non-partisan supporter of the Bill. Senators Robinson and Horgan have seen the light—one could say the green light or the red light—but they have made the decision to join a political party. When this Bill was put forward initially the three sponsors were independent University Members. They put it forward in the most non-partisan way possible. It is not an issue that should be allowed at any time to turn into a political football. It should not be made into something to be kicked to and fro between the parties. It is not something on which votes in a general election should hinge; it should be dealt with because it needs to be dealt with now. I should like to give ourselves a little plug, those of us who are here—Senators Browne, Quinlan, Martin and I. This is a very good argument for the retention of a strong, independent, university voice in Seanad Éireann.

I said at the outset that the crunch issue is the issue of Church-State separation. Thinking has changed radically on this and is changing on this issue currently. Not everybody is agreed that Church and State should be finally separate. Certainly some members of the Catholic Hierarchy are not agreed on this. Bishop Newman has made it abundantly clear that he is opposed to the sort of Church-State separation I am advocating. But I think it is something that has got to happen. If we are going to decry, as I do and would and have always decried, the situation in Northern Ireland of a Protestant State for a Protestant people, we have got to do something about changing the situation here which in many respects can be described as a Catholic State for a Catholic people. If I might make a political point, instead of indulging in discussions about the unrealistic business of holding a referendum and changing Articles 2 or 3, we would be much better off if we got down to our Church-State relations here and sorted them out. This is one of the problems which has to be dealt with.

I do not think that our Church-State relationship is going to change overnight. I do not necessarily think that that would be a good thing. I do think we have to be honest, open and straightforward in facing up to these problems. Let us first of all realise that there is a problem. A number of people in discussing this in the media or even in this House would give you the impression that in these areas there was no problem, that everything is accepted. I should like to quote from column 1155 of the Official Report of 16th December, 1976. Senator Lyons said:

Approaching the whole question, it is clear that everybody of all churches and of all religions realises that family planning is necessary, otherwise we would not have people agreeing to a natural method as against another method. Once we accept that family planning is necessary and that is accepted by everybody else, surely what we must do is attempt to ensure that family planning is carried out in the best interests of the people who need it and who wish it and whose conscience allows them to do it. This is what we, as legislators, have to be concerned with. Let us face up to the problem.

I should also like to quote, as I have quoted before, from a celebrated speech by the late John F. Kennedy, who was explicitly outlining his position, what he believed was best for America and its people during his campaign for the Presidency. The address was to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on 12th September, 1960. I should like to see us aiming towards these ideals of John F. Kennedy who was a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church and a great American:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference—and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all...

I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end—where all men and all churches are treated as equal— where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice—where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind— and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

Having said that this is an issue of separation of Church and State and that it is part of a process which we have got to face up to and one which we have got to proceed with, I state, as a member of the Church of Ireland, that it is not just a minority problem. Perhaps some indication of this is given by the fact that my two cosponsors are not members of minority churches. The pressure for debate and for a change in legislation is not coming from the 5 per cent who often keep their heads too much below the ground. The pressure for change is coming by virtue of the fact that greatly increasing numbers of the majority Church wish to have the legislation changed. They wish to have the opportunity to choose the method of contraception which best suits them. Let me be absolutely clear about this, the division is not a religious one. If there was a division and if one tried demographically to separate the supporters of this measure from the opponents, it would probably be on a rural versus urban basis that the separation would appear most clearly.

Perhaps I have been generalising too much but I know, as someone who was brought up and still lives in the country, that the obvious pressures which one finds in the housing estates in the suburban areas of a big city are less evident in the country than they are in the urban areas. In the country where I was brought up—I was one of a family of four—we left the house early in the morning, perhaps made the odd return at meal time, but we did not come back until nightfall. We were out of our parents' hair for most of the day. In the rural area where I lived there was a system of help available and it was easy enough to get people to look after the children or help in the house for a couple of hours per day. The supports were there which do not apply in urban society. In areas particularly where there are flat dwellers or large housing concentrations one cannot let one's children roam around freely as we could. You cannot get help. You often have the situation of fathers away from home all day, with mothers in total charge, and you just cannot expect the reaction of people in this situation to be the reaction of people in the country. We have got to face the fact whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, that more and more people are living in our cities. More and more of our dwellers are urban dwellers. As the number of urban dwellers increases, so does the pressure for a change in this legislation.

It is a sad fact that the two really vital changes of legislation in this area of family morality have occurred via the courts on the basis of court actions being taken to test the constitutionality of certain laws. The two actions resulted in a section of the adoption law being declared unconstitutional and then the particularly celebrated McGee case which declared unconstitutional the legislation which forbade the importation of contraceptives. We all know this leaves the law in an unsatisfactory situation. I should like to quote Senator Alexis FitzGerald in his speech on the Second Stage of this Bill when he talks about the consequences of the McGee case at column 1149 of the Official Report he says:

The issue seems to me extremely simple. It is rather daunting to think that this simple issue, most clearly expounded in the judgment of the McGee case, now almost at its third anniversary, should have defeated the efforts of the democratic parties elected to these two Houses to solve. This issue is this, everybody knows it, but it is no harm to repeat it—it was never the law that it was a crime to use a contraceptive; it was never the law that it was a crime to manufacture a contraceptive. It was the law, until the McGee case, that it was a crime to import a contraceptive. It remains a crime to sell a contraceptive. For three years we have looked at that simple matter and have made a political football of it which has damaged the reputation of all the political parties and damaged and reduced the respect which the people should have in the political parties they elect. Respect will be necessary if this democracy is to survive. A small simple Bill is all that is required to put this out of court.

Of course, it is not just enough to acknowledge the McGee case decision. We have to put forward some method for the distribution and sale of contraceptives. We have to deal with the problem which was highlighted by a recent Censorship Board decision to ban responsible literature which discussed various methods of family planning. We have got to arrange for proper sex education for our young people. I do not want to take issue very strongly with Senator Quinlan when he discussed this problem in his speech. As I want to be accurate I quote from column 1113 of the Official Report:

So, what are we asked? To follow the road of mother England, to follow along the road to decadence which has so quickly and so drastically overtaken Great Britain in the past two decades. Does anyone here seriously want the situation that prevails in English schools today to prevail here—sex education, with all the implications that go with it? Has that improved the quality of life in England? Has it improved the ability of England to face crises or is it responsible for their present collapse? The same can be said of American society which is a free, open contraceptive society which is advocated for us here.

I am sad that the Senator should try to make out by some unusual form of logic, particularly unusual for a mathematician, that the present situation in which England finds itself is in some way connected with the availability or non-availability of contraceptives. That is such a wild assertion that it has to be nailed and let me nail it here and now. I do not want us to ape the British society. That is the last thing I want. I think we are different. I am not anti-British. My duty is to be pro-Irish; I do not have to be anti-anybody. I certainly do not want to see this society becoming the same as the British society. I have absolutely no interest in this.

Let us look at the facts. I should like to give some figures to help us to make a comparison between our society and the societies which are often named as degenerate societies, degraded societies, whatever they are. America and Sweden are often brought up as the whipping boys—the open, permissive societies. Our society and our whole structure of life is totally different from either America or Scandinavia. It is totally different from Great Britain, except for one part, and that is Northern Ireland. That is the only place where there is a real parallel, where we can say, "Well, there is something that is very similar".

Our churches have commented on this and of course, their domain extends to Northern Ireland. The only fair comparisons we are going to make —if we are going to make any comparisons—must be between the Republic and Northern Ireland where the structures of society are very similar. They are two very conservative societies. I think you have had one Church dominating the situation in the North, it probably still does, although less so now than heretofore. I think that a lot of the Northern Protestants have changed their views of the slogan of "A Protestant State for a Protestant People." I think that if we are going to make a comparison with a society where contraceptives have been available and where certain limited divorce has been available for a period of time, then we ought to try and make comparisons with Northern Ireland, and I am going to read a few figures which I gave the last time. In Northern Ireland in 1970 there were 3.8 per cent illigitimate births as a percentage of all births. In England and Wales in 1970 they were 8.3 per cent of all births and in the Republic in the same year it was 2.7 per cent. That is one figure that indicates the situation in the Republic and Northern Ireland is relatively similar and quite different from that in England and Wales.

That is just one figure which indicates that the situation in the Republic and Northern Ireland is relatively similar and quite different from that in England and Wales. We also have the number of women in Northern Ireland who wish to have abortions and who have to go to the mainland of Britain because abortion is still illegal in Northern Ireland. In 1971 the British record showed that there were 648 from Northern Ireland and 578 from the Republic. In 1972 there were 775 from Northern Ireland and 974 from the Republic. Our population is bigger that that in Northern Ireland but it is not so much bigger. If comparisons are going to me made, let us make comparisons with Northern Ireland and let us compare like with like.

As I said at the beginning, I want to have a realistic and honest facing up to the problems. We are not going to be able to solve them all at once. One of the less honest ways of dealing with this problem is that of prescribing the pill as a cycle regulator. In 1974 a figure was given of 38,000 women in the Republic who were using the pill officially as a cycle regulator. I wonder how many women were actually using the pill as a cycle regulator. If it is going to be prescribed, let us call it a contraceptive. There may be grounds for further examination of the pill either as a cycle regulator or as a contraceptive. It may have unpleasant side effects which we should know about. Let us encourage medical research. As Senator Lyons said, he was delighted to see the World Health Organisation giving some distinguished medical people in Dublin a grant for carrying out tests on a natural method of contraception called the Billings Method.

I would like to have some definite figures on the success or lack of it of the Billings Method. We should be careful about the use of the words "natural" or "unnatural" although I believe that it is the legal word, that it is the word which is used in the legislation. What is natural or what is unnatural in this case? It seems, if one pursues this argument one is getting back to the Middle Ages debate on the morality of operative medicine. In the Middle Ages the theologians and many of the philosophers felt that it was immoral to carry out an operation on a human being, but philosophy and theology have changed. Nobody argues now about the basic morality of carrying out operations on patients in operating theatres in our hospitals. There are problems concerned with donation of parts of the body from people who have recently died and transplant operations. Moral and ethical problems certainly arise but there is no problem about doing something that is basically unnatural to someone in an operating theatre. It seems to me that there is not much difference between the use of an interuterine device which is regarded as unnatural and the use of a thermometer which is regarded as natural. Where is the distinction? I cannot see it. But there is a refusal to face up to the facts and the fact is that the pill is prescribed here officially as a cycle regulator to be used as a contraceptive. The sooner we get away from that situation the better.

This debate has given us an opportunity to look at this problem in a realistic way. The principal debate must take place in the Houses of the Oireachtas and the decisions have got to be taken here. We do not govern by means of "The Late Late Show". I have nothing against "The Late Late Show" and I have often enjoyed it, but the people who make the decisions are here and not on "The Late Late Show".

We have got to face up to the problems. Let us face them honestly. As one of the sponsors of this Bill I would appeal to all Members of the House, and particularly to the Minister who is someone who has from his statements taken a realistic view of this current problem, that we exercise our responsibilities as legislators and not run away from this problem but give the public the opportunity to make their choice. We are not forcing morality down anybody's throat. In fact, we are doing the opposite; we are giving people an opportunity to make a choice and that choice is in the best public interest.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate concerning a proposed change in our laws relating to contraceptives. The present legal position is completely unsatisfactory and needs to be corrected. As a result of the McGee case decision by the Supreme Court, the law is riddled with anomalies. For example, it is not lawful at present to sell contraceptives, but it is lawful to import them. As I said last week in the Dáil, a child of six can import contraceptives because there is now no control whatsoever over their importation.

Furthermore, once contraceptives have been imported into the State there is no control or regulation of any kind over their distribution provided they are not offered for sale. Also, while contraceptives can now be distributed freely to any person, advice and information on their use cannot be published. In addition, the constitutional right of reasonable access to contraceptives for married couples is not necessarily secured under the law as it stands.

Clearly this is an unsatisfactory situation and one that requires the attention of the Oireachtas.

The first thing for us to do is to examine how this situation arose. The House will recall that the law regulating the sale and importation of contraceptives was set down in the 1935 Criminal Law Amendment Act. Section 17 (1) made it unlawful "for any person to sell or expose, advertise or keep for sale or to import, or attempt to import, for sale any contraceptive".

This situation had the effect of preventing the availability of contraceptives in the State. They could neither be bought within the State nor imported from outside it. The clear intention of section 17 (1) of the 1935 Act, which, incidentally, preceded the Constitution, was to prevent the emergence of any sort of market in contraceptives, although it did not prohibit their use or their manufacture. Section 17 (3) prevented their importation, under the provisions of the Customs Consolidation Act of 1876. This remained the position until the prohibition on the importation of contraceptives was contested in the McGee case and was found to be unconstitutional in 1973.

The constitutionality of the prohibition on the sale of contraceptives within the State was not contested and that aspect of the law still remains in force. Most people do not as yet realise that this is the situation. They have not yet grasped the fact that while nobody can buy contraceptives anywhere in the State, a child of any age can order them abroad and can import them without any hindrance or control.

It is perfectly clear that the legal situation created by the 1935 Act which put a complete ban on the access to contraceptives from any source has been ended by the McGee case decision, which established that there was a constitutional right to have access by way of importation. In the law as set down in section 17 (1) there should be no market whatsoever in contraceptives. But since section 17 (3) dealing with their importation has been struck down by the Supreme Court the reality is different. There is a market in contraceptives. All one has to do is to import them.

It is legal to buy contraceptives provided one does not buy them in Ireland. As yet, there is no domestic market in contraceptives because the prohibition on their sale has neither been tested in the courts nor repealed by the Oireachtas. But if we are to be honest in our approach to this matter we must at least entertain the possibility that the Supreme Court could put aside section 17 (1) containing the prohibition on sale if its provisions were contested on the grounds that it violated fundamental human rights. If that were to happen there would then be an open and uncontrolled market within the State. And if we continue to be honest we must also accept that the current anomalies in our legal situation are heightened by the fact that the pill, which is a contraceptive although it has other properties as well, can be imported and sold and, in fact, is widely available and used.

The present legal situation resolves itself as follows: all contraceptives can be imported, some can be sold, some cannot, all can be freely distributed but none can be advertised or publicised.

As I have said, this set of contradictions makes for a completely unsatisfactory situation. It can be handled in one of two ways. Either the Oireachtas corrects these anomalies or else the courts may do so in a piecemeal fashion if various elements of the 1935 Act are contested by different individual citizens and are found to be unconstitutional.

Obviously, the use of the courts, as in the McGee case, is one way by which the law could be changed but it would be a very unsatisfactory way. Essentially, it would consist of a process whereby legal provisions were annulled by the courts if they infringed fundamental human rights. The law would not be changed because of any conscious positive action by the Oireachtas but through actions brought by individuals before the courts. We would be permitting alterations in the law by removing law from the Statute Book, but we would not be replacing it by any provisions setting down new controls or limitations which might not only be desirable from some people's point of view but positively essential from a health viewpoint.

Of course, for politicians faced with an issue which is controversial, which involves a most delicate issue of private morality and which also raises the thorny question of the relationship between public and private morality, this course of action has certain attractions. By leaving everything to the courts we avoid controversy, we avoid having to take decisions which, given the nature of this matter, must inevitably offend somebody. It is a tempting course of action. But in my view it is the wrong one.

On a number of occasions the two Houses of the Oireachtas have considered legislation which dealt with the availability of contraceptives and on every occasion serious disagreement was evident, not just between the parties but also within the parties themselves. This was only to be expected because the matter is one on which there is considerable public disagreement. It would be unwise and imprudent to ignore these divisions or to deride the deeply held convictions of people on both sides of the debate.

I may be wrong but it is my opinion as of now that the disagreement within and between the parties will prevent any legislation on this matter passing through the Oireachtas in the immediate future. I do not believe there is any point in pretending otherwise. But if we wish to eliminate the numerous anomalies I listed earlier, we must do two things—we must get all-party concensus on new legislation and we must permit all Members of both Houses to vote in accordance with conscience.

Unfortunately, the Oireachtas does not have an established tradition of Members voting in accordance with conscience on certain issues which could be expected to transcend party divisions because they were matters of conscience. The major party in the Oireachtas have serious reservations about this approach to legislation. I do not share their objections, but I recognise their existence. To date these reservations have prevented the passage of legislation on this matter on non-party lines.

It is evident to me, therefore, that if the law is to be reformed by the Oireachtas, rather than by the courts, there will have to be all-party consensus prior to the introduction of legislation into either House. That consensus will have to be secured by consultation between the parties to identify areas of agreement and to resolve, if possible, those points which so far have divided both Houses. In a word, what I believe we require is an all-party approach which puts the law on contraceptives above party politics.

Have not the Government a Dáil majority?

This delicate issue has in the past been bedevilled by party political considerations. I say we should decide now to set aside party divisions and to approach the matter in a completely new way. I know I am saying this in an election year when party politics take on an even greater importance than normal. I also know I am proposing something which has not been tried in this form before and where the nearest analogy, the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, has not been as successful as we all would have wished.

Pontius Pilate.

Yet for all that, I can see no other method whereby the Oireachtas can make progress in dealing with the anomalies in the 1935 Act because of the Supreme Court decision in the McGee case and the possibility of further anomalies emerging in the future.

Accordingly, I propose that the three main parties should consult with each other in a sincere and genuine attempt to discover if agreement is possible on a new law concerning the availability of contraceptives in this country. I have given this proposition a great deal of personal thought and I am convinced there is no other avenue of approach with any prospect of success in the near future. I am also convinced that the initial consultation between the parties should be on an informal basis so as to ensure the maximum degree of mutual trust and so as to eliminate whatever temptation there might be to reduce the matter to one of party politics.

If the process of consultation indicates, after a reasonable time, that some progress is possible then it might be considered desirable to establish a Committee of both Houses or of one or other House. This would provide the process of consultation with a more formal foundation and would hopefully conclude with an all-party recommendation for a new law.

It is the duty of the Government to govern.

I have no fixed views as to how a Bill, if such emerged, would be introduced. It could be a Private Members' Bill, jointly introduced by the three parties into either House, or it could be sponsored by the Government of the day. The most important consideration would be that such a Bill would, for the first time, stand a reasonable chance of passing into law.

The procedure I propose does not preclude the right of Members to vote in accordance with their conscience and to oppose, if they so wished, all or any part of a Bill produced with all-party consent. It would be the very negation of what I propose if this were to happen. It is precisely because I recognise the deep convictions involved and because I respect the right to the expression of freedom of conscience on this issue, that I propose this particular procedure. I want to free the controversy from party political divisions while leaving every Member free to vote in accordance with conscience.

It is my intention, purely in my capacity as Leader of the Labour Party, and in no other capacity, to invite the other two parties to engage in a process of consultation on the possibility of agreed changes in the law dealing with contraceptives. I will be in touch with the other two parliamentary parties in the immediate future. In the meantime, I would ask this House, if I may be so permitted, a Chathaoirleach, to give serious consideration to what I have proposed and to facilitate all-party consultations by whatever steps you judge most beneficial.

I would not accept that this procedure avoids the responsibility placed upon the Government of the day to legislate on a delicate issue which has divided both Houses in the past and which is at the centre of much public debate and disagreement. On the contrary, my proposal is an attempt to face up to responsibility. There is no point in introducing legislation which will be defeated and we know if we continue as before that this is what will most likely happen.

Therefore, there is an obligation on us to explore new approaches and, to search for common ground. At the same time, we must minimise the risk of party divisions preventing the emergence of new legislation. Accordingly, I propose that before we go any further we should come together united in a sincere determination to resolve what is a most unsatisfactory, and at times, distressing legal and social situation. Given goodwill all round I am hopeful we can be successful.

We have not been successful in the past. No Bill introduced into either House on this matter has got past the Second Stage, although it is evident from a study of the various Second Reading speeches that agreement could possibly have emerged on details on the Committee Stage if the general principles had been approved on Second Stage. So what I am trying to do is to permit the three parties to engage in a Committee Stage debate before the legislation is produced.

There is one principle I hold with firm conviction—the Oireachtas must legislate on all issues which affect the public good if it is to discharge its duty to the public which elected it.

As legislators, whatever our party label may be we share one common and inescapable obligation—we are here to make and to pass laws irrespective of the difficulties which may be involved for us as parties or as persons.

In this case, I hope I have proposed a mechanism which may assist us all in discharging that obligation.

I frankly confess to a slight degree of disappointment at the stance taken by the Tánaiste in the matter. It means that the Bill is being thrown into the wilderness and that the hope for its passage depends on something as vague as consultations, informal at first, between three parties, and the whole resort to the question of conscience and the free vote. The vista held out by that attitude is endless, dreary, disappointing, imprecise and embarrassing for us as citizens. I am not denying that perhaps it is the only thing to do, the only expedient way. But I would have to register my disappointment that in this matter the Coalition Government could not act with a little more cohesion and at the end of the day, with a little more moral courage.

The acknowledged anachronisms and anomalies present in the opening remarks of the Tánaiste on the matter are even more glaring in the light of the clarity with which he placed them before us—that the present situation is scandalous, that it is an anachronism. He pointed out such things as the fact that children of any age can import contraceptives. He could have pointed out—as he pointed out that they can be distributed freely in the country— that that runs hand in hand with a glaring and embarrassing legal fiction by which people may make a donation instead of paying a fee for them. It is a joke up to a point, but it is not the kind of joke which a legislature which respects itself should be willing to have bandied about for many years.

Almost three years have passed with that odd, jocose situation existing. A lot of other difficulties have arisen—for instance, the banning of a recent book outlining certain means of family planning. We are all disappointed with that situation, but those who want a solid Bill absolutely prohibiting all forms of contraception are disappointed with the situation and find it upsetting. The permissive people are obviously upset, but above all we should be upset because we have other motives for annoyance and embarrassment. These motives are primarily that our laws are at this moment in a state of disrepute. We are conniving at this state of disrepute. The Government seem to be able to do nothing more than to operate a vague formula, a hope, an aspiration, that with the general election coming up and all kinds of political advantage to be gained or lost one way or the other, goodwill will suddenly develop between the three parties, that informal, charismatic, fruitful dialogue will take place and in the fullness of time, due to some strange alchemy, agreement will be reached and a Bill to satisfy all sides will emerge. We know that this is utopian. I am willing to admit that perhaps it is the best the Tánaiste can produce, but I would be surprised if in his heart of hearts he is not disappointed by that situation.

Therefore, I shall do what I have done before, that is, support the Bill on the grounds that it is simple, that it is adequate, that it is reasonable, that it is anything but permissive. If one were to describe it one would say it is a restrictive Bill, it is quite an austere Bill and economical in the amount of freedom that it allows. It strikes the right balance between the public good and individual freedom which should be the hallmark of good legislation, and it removes anomalies.

Having said that, I want to advert to some points that were made by Senator West on the question of the separation of Church and State. He repeatedly said that we need separation of Church and State, and in the interests of the elergy I would like to make the following points clear. We have in this country separation of Church and State and there is nothing in our Constitution suggesting otherwise. We do not have a State church as they have in Britain or in Germany or in most of the Scandanavian countries. In other words, there is separation of Church and State. Side by side with that, Senator West was suggesting that the churches have no role to play in the matter of legislation of this kind. I would dispute that. I would argue that they have a large role to play—all the churches. The Catholic Hierarchy in particular, with regard to a similar Bill drafted some years ago, behaved admirably. They made one statement saying what their view was on the moral situation and then they shut up. The Hierarcy spoke once. They spoke about the morality of the situation and said it was the job of the legislators to decide it, and they have not changed their view on that. Individual prelates have made statements, a varying sort of liberality or conservatism on the subject. That is another matter, sin scéal eile.

The fact is the church has said it is our job as legislators to settle this matter, and they have outlined, as it is their duty to their faithful, what their view on the matter was. And as surely, as Senator West or anybody else in the House would hardly deny, the Presbyterian Church recently exercised their right to express their discontent on the matter of divorce, and surely it is our duty to listen to them. It is our duty as legislators to listen to any responsible body of opinion particularly when that body of opinion is based on centuries of experience in moral matters. The Catholic Church's view on this is a view certainly that we should listen to, though mind you it has not been presented to the legislators in this House as a form of legal pressure; it was issued as a statement of guidance to the faithful.

This is a matter of considerable importance. It is particularly worth mentioning, and it is worth having a balanced attitude towards, when over and over again we are being compared to Northern Ireland. What does Northern Ireland think of us? I have never seen any bishops around the corridors of this building here. An occasional collar appears in the Public Galleries, but if I switch on my television set the screen is bristling with dog collars from Northern Ireland. Reverend Beatties, Reverend Paisleys, Reverend Bradfords, Reverend Tom Cogley and all are at present speaking in a most highly emotive political way.

I understand the Reverend Paisley intends to run for Europe. I think that the Reverend Edward Daly would get a very good vote if he ran for direct elections in Europe, but there is no suggestion anywhere that he tried or that he ever will.

That is not to say, of course, that we are so naïve as to think that the church does not exert pressure on us individually and so forth. They are a powerful body of opinion, but the degree with which we listen to them is a test of our maturity. It is part of our responsibility to listen and it is equally part of our responsibility to make up our own minds, and this is why, and it is out of this conviction, my disappointment with the Government on this particular matter is so great.

One of the interjections of Senator Browne was that it is the duty of a Government to govern, and I presume what he meant by "Government" there is the Government parties in power. They should draw up the laws and they should enact them and if necessary they should, I suppose, get the Whips out. I am realist enough to realise that we might even have another débâcle of the kind we had the last time, when a Minister for Justice brought forward a Bill with apparently the full consent of the Leader, the Taoiseach, and at the last minute it was discovered to the people's surprise, if not chagrin, that he had been led up the garden path and that he did not have the support of his party at all in the matter. Perhaps that is what was behind the Tánaiste's mind when he said the best he can offer is this aspiration towards a miraculous consensus. He does not want to see that happen again. Quite frankly I do not want it either.

With regard to the Bill itself, on the specific issue I should like to make the following point. I made it before and I will make it far less voluminously now. In regard to the Bill, as with all just legislation, it should not come out of head counting, finding out through a gallup poll or some kind of referendum how many people in the country feel about it. We are not experts and we are really not in a position to judge as sociologists that kind of reaction.

We are here because we are trusted corporately to exercise the judgment of common sense. This has been admirably defined, it seems to me, in a Maccabean lecture in a paper that is well known. It is called "The Enforcement of Morals" and it is by The Hon. Sir Patrick Devlin. It is the Maccabean Lecture in Jurisprudence of the British Academy in 1959. He talks about the principle by which we should govern. It is a principle that is hard to define and he defines it with regard to Britain in the following way:

How are the moral judgements of society to be ascertained? By leaving it until now, I can ask it in the more limited form that is now sufficient for my purpose. How is the law-maker to ascertain the moral judgements of society? It is surely not enough that they should be reached by the opinion of the majority; it would be too much to require the individual assent of every citizen. English law has evolved and regularly uses a standard which does not depend on the counting of the heads. It is that of the reasonable man. He is not to be confused with the rational man. He is not expected to reason about anything and his judgement may be largely a matter of feeling. It is the viewpoint of the man in the street —or to use an archaism familiar to all lawyers—the man in the Clapham omnibus. He might also be called the right-minded man. For my purpose I should like to call him the man in the jury box, for the moral judgement of society must be something about which twelve men or women drawn at random might after discussion be expected to be unanimous. This was the standard the judges applied in the days before Parliament was as active as it is now and when they laid down rules of public policy. They did not think of themselves as making laws but simply as stating principles which every right-minded person would accept as valid. It is what Pollock called ‘practical morality', which is based not on theological or philosophical foundations but ‘in the mass of continuous experience half-consciously or unconsciously accumulated and embodied in the morality of common sense'. He called it also ‘a certain way of thinking on questions of morality which we expect to find in a reasonable civilized man taken at random'.

That statement, I think, is the one that really we have to work by, except that in our own jurisdiction we have a complication that that complication is the anachronism of having a Constitution as well. He is talking about a common law system in which, by the accumulation of laws and precedents, law is built up.

What we have here is a situation where we have the common law principle working side by side with a written Constitution and that is the source of a great deal of our embarrassment because the last time we debated this here, the Minister for Justice, Deputy Cooney came in and said—it was a very dramatic moment; the House was full—"Alas we have been wasting our time, this debate is now outmoded, the McGee case has taken place and now, of course, we will draft laws which will regularise the whole procedure." His words were to that effect. That was almost three years ago. What was happening? We were working according to what you might call a common law principle and the Supreme Court was working according to a constitutional principle. I am using these words not with the accuracy or precision that Senator Robinson would employ them but in a general layman's sense.

Therefore, what we had was a situation where the Legislature would now regularise something the Supreme Court had made imperative for it to do. The Legislature went about doing that and it failed, and it is in the retrospect of that failure that we are trying to get another Bill through. The beating of our wings against the air here today, particularly as dramatised in the speech by the Tánaiste, shows how far we have gone in the entire matter. In other words, the situation has been reached where the ordinary man in the street is embarrassed. He has not thought it out to the same degree as we have, but if you ask your ordinary man on the 46A bus to change the cultural and geographical content of the subject of this Bill——

What about the ordinary woman on the 46A bus?

That is all cod if the Senator will forgive me saying so.

Hardly in the context of this Bill.

I saw in the paper the other day that the word "boycott" in America has now to be called "girlcott" if there is a woman in the case. I am not interested in that semantic blather. With all due respect, the man on the 46A bus is meant to include the woman on the 46A bus. The situation with regard to this can be put very simply. The law is very concerned with the relief of distress and oppression. Consider the position of somebody who has a large family, perhaps an inconsiderate drunken or violent husband, and poor housing—in other words, a woman of our society who is oppressed by the fact that we have not delivered on our promises, or indeed the Government's last promises. The cutback on housing and the failure to expand housing is one of our scandals. If such a person is so disadvantaged as to have five, six or seven children, maybe some of them ailing, has she the right to employ contraceptives? If you put that situation to anybody the ordinary person would say: "Yes, they should be available to her." If you were to ask the same person: "Should we have them on sale and advertised? Should we"—to use the rhetoric of Senator Quinlan—"open the floodgates?" I think the ordinary person would say: "No, we would not deny that woman those rights nor, on the other hand, would we flood the country with every kind of exploitative machinery from the multi-nationals and from all the commercial interests concerned in this."

I do not want a permissive Bill. I do not want an oppressive Bill. We need a restrictive Bill. I suggest that this is a restrictive Bill. The people who regard this Bill as a Bill concerned with the opening of the floodgates are crazy. This Bill builds in the most austere conditions with regard to the control, the prohibition of manufacture, distribution, censorship. It is really quite a restrictive Bill. In fact, it is the kind of Bill that would be passed if we had the courage to assent to that very principle of law, rather than the lobbies fulminating in the columns of the newspapers, all those letters that keep coming to us through the press, cyclostyled and signed by family planning people. I have given up reading them. I am not talking about them. I am talking about the ordinary Irishman or woman. I am sorry, I was a bit too dismissive of Senator Quinn's point. My conscience has been pricking me since, so I apologise.

This Bill reflects the ordinary Irishman or woman and that is one of the reasons why I back it. The basis of this Bill has to do with this question of human rights. It has been established that the planning of a family is a human rights. It is a very private human right. Human beings who are old enough to be allowed to get married should have the right to regulate this for themselves. I am not saying whether contraception is moral or against any of the church's teachings. That is not really what we are talking about. You take that into account, but you have to take into account also the equity with which we run our society.

We have the person with the curious laissez faire outlook who would say: “The present situation is all right. Anybody who wants them can get them”. In other words, if I want contraceptives in England I suppose I can look up The New Statesman, look up the proper columns there—it is under “Durex”, in fact—and I can write or maybe can send a few quid to show my bona fides. If my address is all right, if my hand is literate and my writing paper good, I will get them without any fuss. They will trust me. But if it is an illiterate scrawl or semiliterate scrawl—there are a good deal of illiterate scrawls and that is another background to our society—the same ease of access and availability is not there. Perhaps the person concerned never heard of The New Statesman or bought nothing but The Sunday World or maybe The Catholic Standard of a Sunday.

In other words, it is the disadvantaged people who suffer most from this. The reasonably literate fat cats of our society or even the reasonably slim and comparatively thin cats of our society are OK, but the kind of person that this Bill is primarily meant to lift the burden from are the very people who are suffering most. I am not just thinking of the mothers. I am thinking of the children who come into a world where they are going to be dirty, probably diseased, ill-educated, unhoused. The one resource that certain classes of women in that society have against their environment is the availability of contraceptives. I do not think anybody can contradict me. These conditions are there and this is what I am concerned with in this Bill. That is why I express my disappointment—I am sure it is a well-shared disappointment— that this Oireachtas cannot muster the nerve, sinew and moral courage and provide the human resources to alleviate these conditions.

I will be bitterly disappointed if what the Tánaiste has asked for does not happen. I know it is offered in goodwill. It is a last resource. I hope it is not the only one. I hope Fianna Fáil do not either abstain or oppose it, that at least they will throw it open to the private judgment and private conscience of their Members. There is just a chance that it might come through then. But until that is done, I think we are a society with a certain cloud of shame hanging over us.

I am very pleased by the announcement just made by the Leader of my party. It has been dismissed by way of interjection by Senator Browne and, in the opening remarks of Senator Martin, it has been scathed for not having that necessary degree of moral courage. Senator Martin however towards the end of his speech, which I found at times difficult to follow, wished it very well. If he wished this initiative all that well, he has not given it the kind of launching pad it deserves and, indeed, that it will need over the next three or four weeks. That is the period of time within which I would like to see action taking place on this.

I say this in all sincerity to the Senator: if it is put out that this is simply a face-saving device by the Leader of the Labour Party, and indeed by the Members of the Labour Party proposing this Bill, then all our efforts and all our aspirations in this matter will have been in vain. It is not a face-saving device. The Labour Party do not have to save their face in this regard. The Labour Party's record was quite clear even before Senator Mary Robinson joined these benches, and at the moment it is equally clear on this. For the benefit of the Leader of this House I am talking about the Members of the Parliamentary Party of the Labour Party in that specific regard.

For the record I did not say it was a face-saving device.

I think it is possible that that interpretation could have been put on it. Let us come to what is before this House now as a result of the intervention of the Leader of the Labour Party. He quite factually presented a case that all of us are aware of. I am new to this House and new to the Oireachtas. There are many Members here who know, both from experience and from their knowledge and the ways of this House, how totally unrealistic the prospect is of any party, of any Government, given the current situation, passing a Bill on the basis of the one outlined today.

It was suggested by Senator William Ryan on the 16th of December last that when Fianna Fáil return—should that day ever arise—that they will legislate on this matter and that in that context they see it as the duty of the Government to legislate. That would all be very well if in the preceding 16 years the same Government, which was formed by Fianna Fáil and for the last part of their office was as an absolute majority Government had seen fit to legislate. They cannot claim that there was not a demand for it or that it had not become an issue because we had this going back for a long time. I suggest, respectfully, to Fianna Fáil that there is within this mechanism offered by the Tánaiste something that will resolve a difference of approach that remains not just in the Fine Gael Party, which was so ably and clearly demonstrated by the contribution of Senator Lyons and that of the Leader of the House. I should not really say "contradiction" but a difference of approach because there is no contradiction as such in it.

Surely there is a contradiction when they vote differently? They go into different lobbies.

On reflection I accept that semantic correction. The same difficulties that have been manifested within the Fine Gael Party very obviously exist within Fianna Fáil and those difficulties for 16 years prevented Fianna Fáil——

Do they not exist in the Labour Party also?

They do, but not to the same extent. The Labour Party, as a political party, have decided at their annual conference to support this measure and the parliamentary party have decided to support it in the sense that they are in favour of this measure. The record of the Labour Party, both in this House and in the other House, is quite clear in that regard.

Did all the Labour Party agree?

From the record it is quite clear where the Labour Party stand on this issue. I would like to see where the Fianna Fáil Party today stand on this question. It would surprise me if the delegates to the new youth conferences which Fianna Fáil are endeavouring to hold around the country were mildly interested in what the parliamentary party reaction is to this. Fianna Fáil have published policies on every other area of major policy, and the fact that they refuse to say anything on this matter seems to be extraordinary.

I want to come back to Senator O'Higgins' speech. I prepared a speech and I was not in a position to anticipate the Tánaiste's intervention. When the dust has settled in this I think the speech by the Leader of the House is going to be seen as a seminal speech of its kind. It was an important speech, sincere and seriously considered. He opened with a number of remarks to which I would like to put the other side of the argument. The first was his plea for tolerance. I do not propose to quote the record. It is there for anybody who wishes to read it. I endorse the emphasis he laid on the record of this House regarding the right of individuals to put forward their point of view and also to vote as they feel they should vote when that vote is a free one.

The criticism that has been levelled outside this House at the proponents of this and other measures, against the Taoiseach and Ministers of the Government is at best counter productive to the objectives of the proponents of this and other measures and shows at worst a very marked degree of intolerance that does not do any good to their cause or the stature of democracy in this country.

Senator O'Higgins, in a very detailed, well-structured and argued speech, made a number of assumptions with which I could not agree. We are a sovereign State; we are a Republic. As Senator Martin has said, we have separated legally in our Constitution Church and State. The previous Government removed Article 44 which disposed of even the suggestion that there might be some connection between Church and State. All that Article did was simply to recognise a factual position. They are the facts as I see them. If we proceed from those facts, on the basis of what amounts to a head count in Senator O'Higgins' speech, we hear remarks like: 100 per cent of the people are Christians and 95 per cent of them are Catholics. This is an area of morality. The Catholic Church has laid down a particular position in this so therefore we have an obligation to vote accordingly on those lines." That is a sincerely held view. But, if one is to pursue that to its logical conclusion, not just on this matter but on all matters, then this Oireachtas merely becomes the agent in legislative terms for the dominant religious persuasion of the time.

I do not accept that that is democracy. I do not accept that within a constitutional structure that is the kind of society the Leader of this House really wants. There is a danger that, if he were to pursue, the contradictions, as they appear to me, would become all too ludicrous. For example, it could be argued that the same 95 per cent are obliged to do other things by the church to which they give their allegiance and therefore, that church having decided that it was necessary that those things should be done, it would follow that the State should pass laws to ensure that those things were carried out. If it is an obligation on a member of the Catholic Church to attend church regularly would it not fall upon the State, in the interests of public morality and the common good, to take it upon itself to ensure that such attendances were kept up?

Irish people had that experience in the past in relation to another church, which was the majority church of the people of the state of which Ireland was a part at that time. We rightly resisted it. The fact that the numbers have changed or indeed that the churches have changed does not, in my view, change the position. Therefore, I absolutely disagree with the line that Senator O'Higgins took in this matter. In saying that I fully recognise that the line he took represents the viewpoint of a substantial number of people. It is one that is held very sincerely and very strongly. It is one that I can recognise not in my own generation but in my parents' generation. It has echoes in every one of our families and in our social relation.

I say to Senator O'Higgins and to all the other Members who oppose this Bill that the request, the demand and the pressure for change, democratically and legally, on this issue is not coming from some alien source, it is not coming from across the waters or from pagan England or from America. It is coming from us, the Irish people, to whom the access to these things is vitally important, young parents making decisions about their families, making decisions about how they want to have children and when, on the basis of their beliefs, attitudes and dedication to this country.

I am the youngest Member of this House and the father of two children. I share something that many other people in the House do not share. I belong to a generation that have not been obliged to emigrate. I belong to a generation that will for the first time stay in the country in a way no previous generation had the opportunity to do. In saying that I am poignantly aware of the numerous generations that had to go. I am very much aware of the countless people who left this country because there was no room in it for them, because there was no generosity in it for them or because there were no jobs in it for them. I am constantly aware that the credit for that turnaround in emigration does not fall on any one Government or on any administration.

It could be truly argued that it was the objective of all parties since the foundation of the State to reverse that tide. I say to the Members of this House and to the older members of our society that having successfully reversed that tide they have set in train a process of social demand by virtue of the sheer pressure of numbers of people in this island which has already and which will increasingly in the future put pressure on our society to change its attitudes, laws and traditionally held values in a number of areas. We must ensure that in the process we are not put outside the law. To a certain extent that is what is implicit in what is occurring at the moment.

I want to speak particularly about who is affected by this Bill. I want to take up a point that Senator Martin made about access to contraception methods at the moment. Before I do that I want to take up a point that the Leader of the House made when he talked about the Title of the Bill and to put on the record something that I am sure Senator Robinson and the other proponents of this Bill would share. The Leader of the House queried the Short Title of the Bill, that it was a family planning Bill. It was a point picked up by Senator Quinlan. They suggested that it should be more correctly entitled a Bill to permit the sale and distribution of contraceptives. If natural methods were banned or disallowed then our concern would be for the legalisation of those too. It is simply because they are not prohibited that it was not necessary to include them as such in the Title. There is no distinction made between the two in the objective of enabling couples to decide the space and number of their families.

As a Member of the Labour Party I am particularly aware of the fact that the people who are most disadvantaged by the present legal anomaly are not the middle-class, not the people who have had the benefit of second and third level education largely funded by the rest of the community. The people who are well educated, with some degree of independence in their thinking, who have some economic substance which allows them to exercise choice in a number of ways—choice in their doctor, choice in mobility to this clinic or to that clinic—have succeeded in getting access to all forms of family planning. It is a great indictment of middle-class Ireland that, having successfully done that over the last three or four years since the pressure for this legislation started, they have washed their hands of this issue. We have no way of testing the demand or the consumption. Middle-class Ireland, having satisfied its particular needs and its particular access, said "Well, that is it, we have got what we wanted" and let the situation lie. To paraphrase the words of Senator Martin, "Anybody can get it if it is there, so why bother to change the law?"

I want to talk about the people I represent, that I meet every day, who do not have the benefit of independent thinking or the self-confidence of such thinking that education gives to some people. They do not have the financial mobility; they do not have the same degree of self-assurance that sections of the middle class, who avail of the family planning clinics, currently have. They are literally at the mercy of what the Tánaiste and Leader of the Labour Party has rightly decried as a legal mess. They are the working people of this country, who are really suffering as a result of this situation. There is surely an obligation on all the Members of this House to try particularly to do something to resolve that problem.

I believe, as a Member of the Labour Party and as a socialist, that I have an overriding responsibility to ensure that there is some degree of equality of access in this matter. What exists at the moment is a travesty of any description of social justice in this regard. There is no such degree of access for the reasons I have outlined. That is not by way of criticism of the family planning clinics. On the contrary, we have seen the difficulties attached to the establishment of such clinics. The experience in Galway alone is enough for anybody to realise what those difficulties are.

The pressures on our society, which result in the demand for this among other things, will not go away. In the last two or three years we have had, for the first time, hard figures for a situation which many of us had begun to realise and which the census figures had begun to show in crude terms: the overall increase in population and the projected increase in population. Professor Brendan Walshe has suggested, among other things, that, in order to reach the objective of full employment by 1985, we will have to create 25,000 to 30,000 new jobs over the next ten years. That is largely because of our population policy, or lack of it, I should say, because previously a population policy was unnecessary. Emigration was the great siphoner of all of that. The whole issue of population growth in this country has become critical and it is something that will not go away. There is no evidence in our history to suggest that traditional Irish society is capable of responding to population increase by accommodating additional people in our land. On the contrary, the evidence since 1846 has been that it simply exports to the nearest available market the surplus population it cannot absorb. In so doing it seriously depresses the labour market in terms of the value of wages of people who opt to remain or who wish to remain, who simply do not want to go.

Access to different legal methods of family planning, carried out with proper health supervision, has now taken on additional importance because of the explosion in our population figures. It is my belief that in ten years time when people come to read this debate, and the preceding debates when we discussed this measure, it is going to look extraordinarily dated, because I confidently feel that in ten years' time we will be discussing a population policy. There is no way we are going to be able to provide the facilities needed for that sort of population at that rate of increase. Whatever about the reservations of conservative Ireland today on the issue of private and public morality, the real demand that additional people are going to make in the next three or four years upon the entrenched positions of privilege and wealth of conservative Ireland will be so strong that legalising contraception in all its forms will be a far more ready pill to swallow than the substantial redistribution of existing wealth which could be the result of that sort of pressure.

I hold that to be on the cards here. I hold that to be something which the bulk of Members of this House have not fully realised. As a democrat I am severely worried and perturbed at the continued failure of this House, and of the Oireachtas, to recognise the kind of social forces that are building up around the gates of this rather grandiose and secluded mansion in the middle of an expanding and exploding city. I am worried about the failure of people who can live in here virtually all day, bar sleeping here, and not realise that in many cases people outside this building have simply passed it by. The decision about private or public morality has been taken by all the people who have decided to avail of contraception anyway. Not all of them have ceased officially to be members of the Roman Catholic Church. Most if not all of them consider themselves to be members of that church. Most if not all of them will retain basically the same beliefs they held before. Certainly, the people I know do not feel they have reneged or become apostates to the religious beliefs they were proud to inherit and hold very dear to themselves.

However, on this matter and many other matters we have been passed by people who are making these options for themselves and taking whatever measures necessary or seem to be forced upon them. In so doing they are undermining the basis of law and morality here because they are making the Oireachtas virtually irrelevant. That is a real danger, and it is because of that anomalous situation that I urge that the measure and the initiative the Tánaiste has taken today is picked up by Members of all parties.

I would prefer if the Government introduced a measure. I would prefer if it could be seen that the measure agreed by my party was properly drafted and introduced—not necessarily in this House but in the other House—by the responsible Minister and pushed through. I am a party politician and this is part of our party policy I was pleased to be associated with at an early stage. I would like to see that happen, but it is not going to happen as long as there are only 20 Members of the Labour Party in the other House. Everybody knows it is not going to happen. I am not prepared to wait the number of years necessary in order for that number to increase to the significant stage where we can make it happen. The issues at the base of all this are so important and so critical that if we cannot obtain this measure in what one might describe as the traditional manner then we should try to regularise and democratise the position by some other measure.

Senator Martin, in his concluding remarks, correctly described the initiative of the Labour Party as being the only realistic one that had any prospect of success. He wished it well and hoped the Fianna Fáil Party, the majority party, the republican party, would respond to this initiative and try to do something about it. I hold that view also. I say to Fianna Fáil that it is not that they have an obligation to do this —they do not have any obliagtion whatsoever—but they represent the biggest percentage of the Irish electorate. They are the largest party in this Oireachtas. There are numerous people who will always be Fianna Fáil supporters who badly want a change in this position and the law properly brought into line with social practice. They are being given an opportunity now to do what Deputy Desmond O'Malley wanted to do in the other House when a similar Bill was debated there—to produce proper and effective legislation.

From reading the debate it appears his arguments against the measure introduced by the Minister for Justice were not so much its principle but its legislative and administrative practicability.

We now have an opportunity from the Government to the Opposition party to participate in drafting legislation in a way that has not previously been offered. One can make a very cynical comment and say, as has been said, "This is washing your hands of the obligation to govern; this is a Pontius Pilate effort." I do not accept that view, because the fact remains that the situation is intolerable. It is uniquely oppressive for working people in this society and the count of heads— perhaps more appropriately the count of feet—in both Houses indicates that there would be no change through the normal channels. There is now a very distinct possibility for Fianna Fáil, as a major party with a constitutional history, to participate in providing for its loyal supporters the kind of democratic measures its supporters require while at the same time maintaining their own autonomy. They are not getting the Government off the hook on this. They are not getting the Labour Party off the hook. We are not on any hook. The hook, if any, we are on is that we only have 20 seats. The next election might see some change in that. What we are doing is providing for numerous Fianna Fáil supporters the right of access to family planning clinics for both natural and mechanical methods of contraception and the right to plan their families in the way they see fit.

When these debates are read at some future date it will be asked, perhaps by my children, who are now five and six, what it was we were arguing about; has it been about family planning? We cannot say we are arguing about family planning because we are all agreed that family planning is a good thing. All the churches have said it should be available and that parents have the right to plan their families. Senator Quinlan stated this in his opening remarks immediately after the contribution of the Leader of the House. We are not disputing whether there should or should not be family planning and we are not disputing whether family planning methods should be natural ones. We are simply disputing whether what is described legally as unnatural methods should be permitted by law and whether the necessary arrangements should be made by the State to regulate the sale and advertisement and health factors involved in that. To reply to the question, what are we really arguing about and what is this issue about I say that we are here discussing yet again, as tired men and women in a secluded, isolated building, whether we have the right to decide what happens in the privacy of the bedrooms of this country between men and women who are deciding whether to have families or not. If that is not an extraordinary intrusion into the privacy of the individual and an extraordinary assumption of moral rectitude, I do not know what is. Can we decide what is the right way or the moral way two people should make love? If we think we can we have got ourselves into an extraordinary situation. When time settles and the dust lies gently on these debates and they are read, that a debate like this actually took place in 1977 will be wondered at.

We have had an initiative from the Leader of the Labour Party, in his stated capacity as Leader of that party, in an attempt to break what is manifestly and obviously a deadlock regarding legislation on this matter. The major party in this country has decided to say nothing. I hope that position changes but the only indication we have had from Fianna Fáil on the record of this House is that issued by Senator Ryan. Last week Deputy Seán Moore of Fianna Fáil in the Dáil expressed concern about the position in the course of a question. For the benefit of those Fianna Fáil Members who did not hear that debate, I should like to read what Deputy Moore had to say. Deputy Moore is a colleague of mine in that we both operate in the same constituency and represent the same area on Dublin City Council. This quotation from the Dáil Official Report of 3rd February, 1977, column 880:

6. Mr. Moore asked the Minister for Health if any Government control is exercised in the instances where organisations in the Dublin city area issue contraceptive devices; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

The Minister for Health made the following statement:

There is no Government control, as such, on this but the Deputy will be aware that there are legislative controls. If contraceptive devices are being supplied in contravention of the legislation the action to be taken in relation to any organisation supplying them would be a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Mr. Moore: Am I to take it that anybody, even a commercial, profit-making concern can set up a clinic or a room in this city or in any country town and supply these devices without any medical guidance or anything else, despite the medical evidence that there is a danger and that no prosecution will follow?

As we know, that is basically what can happen.

Deputy Moore pressed again:

There are people who may have no medical knowledge taking it upon themselves to advise people to use these things. One young student tells me that he got as many as he wanted, even though he only wanted to test out their availability,——

I am rather dubious about that.

——and, in fact, a person ran after him and said: "We want some money for these", but needless to remark he did not pay.

Mr. Corish: They cannot sell.

Deputy Moore again pushed:

Perhaps they may not pay directly in cash but I expect there are other means of payment.

A quack doctor, for instance, could be prosecuted for giving wrong advice whereas the people who offer advice in relation to the use of these devices are outside the law.

Finally, Deputy Moore said:

I know that some of the Minister's colleagues voted against the Bill to change the situation, but that should not prevent him from investigating it.

While we are awaiting legislation there is nothing to prevent the Minister ascertaining what can be done under the existing legislation.

Since those questions were answered by the Leader of the Labour Party we have had this debate and this intervention from the Tánaiste and Minister for Health. I say, in all sincerity, to the members of Fianna Fáil that their colleague in the other House has demonstrated his interpretation of what the dangers are in this situation.

The Taoiseach has, too.

Yes. There is an obligation for all of us to act on this. There is no question of relieving the embarrassment of the Government on this. There is every question of doing some social good for which we are all elected. If Fianna Fáil think that this is an issue on which they can beat the Government or the Labour Party or Fine Gael—although Fine Gael are quite capable of speaking for themselves—I am sure there are many other party issues into which the party political institutions can readily get their teeth and argue about than this, in an election year.

I support this Bill as it is before the House. I have reservations about its restrictive nature and grave reservations on two counts about the limitation to married couples on the grounds as to whether it is practical or possible. The argument used by Fianna Fáil in the other House could be applied. I suggest it is the obvious desire of Senator Robinson and the other proposers of this Bill that the availability of contraceptive methods be done responsibly. I concur with that view. If that is the only way that can be achieved, I readily accept it. I am expressing my reservations about it because it is somewhat restrictive.

I should like to see a Bill broadly containing the provisions outlined in this one coming back from joint consultation between the three parties. There is an obligation on the three parties to act quickly on this. There is the real possibility that in doing so we can set up a precedent in which difficult issues of social change and social values can be dealt with in not a non-partisan fashion, because there will be partisans on both sides, but in a non-party fashion. It is issues such as these and others that will come before this House which, because of the demographic pressures I have talked about in the next three or four years, will not be capable of proper resolution democratically if we are tied to the party structure we have at the moment. Therefore, I urge that Fianna Fáil reconsider their entire position and go back over their own records regarding the Ard-fheiseanna of the party at different times when this matter was discussed and see what they can do for their supporters.

I hope there will be some movement on this. I hope to see some constructive action. If this precedent is successful, if it works, then in the other areas— speaking in particular of the question of marital relations and family law generally—there will be an opportunity for people to participate in framing legislation. That is not necessarily the preserve of any one party. It does not necessarily have to be a Government formed by majority parties, because what are described as matters of conscience are so strongly held by individual members whose loyalty to the political aims of that party is never in doubt that a large party may be prevented from acting unilaterally on this. We have the example of the previous administration being unable to act on something upon which they were pressed not once but on many occasions.

The Leader of the Labour Party has opened up a new door, a very important one and if we are serious about respect for democracy and the grand old men and women of this House and, indeed, of our Establishment, who are very anxious to lecture us on the necessity for democratic forms and the importance of democratic institutions, are serious about their loyalty to such institutions then they must try to make those institutions work in terms that are relevant in 1977. Refusing to either participate in this debate or refusing to recognise that people can exercise their concept of morality in a mature, responsible fashion in a way that in no way could be sonstrued as endangering public morality would be wrong. The choice between a natural or an unnatural method of contraception in the privacy of one's own bedroom can hardly be construed, under any form of logic, to constitute a danger to public morality. If those people are really committed to the enlargement of the democratic process—if one wants to call it that—or its adjustment to the increase in social pressures we have had over the last five years and which will continue unabated over the next ten or 15 years, then they have an overriding obligation in this regard to accept willingly the initiative of the Leader of the Labour Party and participate in this.

I should like to thank the Leader of the Labour Party for coming in on this debate and to compliment the three proposers and drafters of this legislation for trying, yet again, to change the laws of the land in this regard. I should like to place on the record of the House my recognition that democracy is a slow process. It is a difficult, arduous, frustrating and, in many cases, boring process for the people who have to endure it or live through it. Sometimes it is far too slow to respond to events that are around us. Sometimes it makes a bit of an idiot of itself. However, it is the best process I know of and it is preferable to blowing somebody's kneecap off should one disagree with him or locking him up if one does not like the sound of his voice or the viewpoints put forward.

I am a privileged member of our society both in terms of the education I received and, more important, in that I can live in the comfortable realisation that I will not have to emigrate. That option was not forced upon me even as a graduate of one of our universities, and I have been given, along with the rest of my colleagues and contemporaries, the real option to stay here and make serious decisions about my future. The implications of our simply staying here and having families brings in a real sense a whole host of social pressures which we have never experienced before here. We have an obligation to recognise there are new social forces and pressures on this land that are showing themselves in a way not previously seen. There is an overriding obligation upon this House and this Oireachtas and us, as public representatives, to generously, openly and courageously respond to it as individuals and members of different political parties.

I welcome this Bill, I support it and I welcome the initiative of the Leader of the Labour Party.

When previous measures similar to this were put before the House I voted in favour of them and I shall do so now. My contribution proper was prepared for the first day on which this matter was debated and it is correct to refer to the important contribution made by the Tánaiste as Leader of the Labour Party. It was a very important and timely contribution, and generous and far-reaching in the proposal he put forward. It merits very serious consideration by all parties.

I was taken aback by the response in the contributions since the Tánaiste's interruption and in the interjections. I do not think the reaction of Senator Martin or the interjections made by other Members were worthy of the suggestion put forward by the Leader of the Labour Party. It merits serious consideration not just in relation to the matter before the House, the Family Planning Bill, but in relation to all matters appertaining to the difference between public and private morality and the family. There could usefully be an all-party committee, informal or otherwise, set up which would try to remove from the party political spectrum many of those issues.

In the notes I prepared for the last occasion I suggested that there should be a free vote on matters such as this. I appeal for reconsideration now.

Another important issue was raised by the Tánaiste. While Fianna Fáil may have taken a decision not to support or to vote against this measure, apparently there was a decision taken by Senator Quinn's party—the party of the Tánaiste—to vote for it. But the Tánaiste's appeal was that there would be informal talks with a view to having the right of a free vote allowed to all the Members of the Oireachtas. That represents an important aspect of the speech of the Tánaiste. He was suggesting that nobody should be bound by a whip either to vote for or against this or similar measures in the area of private morality.

I do not believe there is a party political advantage to be gained in this area or that it is an area in which party policies should come out clearly one way or another. If the intervention of the Tánaiste today can bring about a situation where all parties could readily agree to remove from the heat of party politics and the glare of the media all these issues in relation to private morality, then this debate, even if it achieves nothing else, will have been worth while. Consequently, any further contribution here, or in the Dáil, must take great cognisance of the remarks of the Tánaiste.

With due respect to Senator Quinn it is perhaps not appropriate to remind the Opposition of their lack of action while in Government or of their attitude in relation to such measures. The Tánaiste is inviting all politicians to adopt a new approach to this matter. We must stop chiding each other as to our politics or attitudes heretofore.

On the last occasion this matter was debated some fine speeches were made by people of widely differing viewpoints which were, nonetheless, fair in their construction and presentation. I will try to genuinely and honestly set out my view and to give my reasons for supporting this measure and for supporting similar measures in the past. I am not a religious fanatic and neither am I an atheist nor an agnostic. I do not believe there is any necessity, as some people appear to, to philosophise or agonise on this matter. I examined the situation and came to the conclusion that I would vote for a change in the law in this regard because that was the right thing to do.

It is important that those of us who have religious beliefs should say that. I feel I am no better or no worse a Catholic for having come to that decision. I am not voting for this measure because it is the popular thing to do. I am not voting for this measure either in the hope of gaining votes in my political career or in the expectation of losing votes for myself in my political career. I am voting because I examined the matter and my conscience decided that I should vote a particular way. Similarly, if there are other people who, having fairly examined this vexed question, come to opposite conclusions and genuinely hold those beliefs, then I believe they should be allowed to vote in a contrary way and should not be subject to ill-founded or unfair criticism. In that same way I would expect they would afford to me and to those who support this measure the right to hold our viewpoint and the right to expect that we would not be subjected to unfair or unjustified criticism.

I respect the people who oppose this Bill but I believe that it is equally a matter of individual conscience for any member of the community as to whether or not they should use contraception. If those who disagree with me in this Chamber respect my right to disagree with them, I believe they should equally respect the rights of the individual in the matter of private morality and especially in the use of contraception.

In view of the associations which some speakers have with various outside groups it is important to say that I am not a member of any pressure group or any lobby that is urging on my colleagues within the Oireachtas a change in the law in this regard. I am sure we all have become tired of the bombardment of literature from the proponents and opponents of this measure. I have as little time for the fanatical proponents of a change in the law as I have for the fanatical opponents. They can all burn whatever they want to as far as I am concerned. I will make up my own mind on this matter and it is up to every Member of the Oireachtas to make up his own mind on issues such as this. The more pressure that is exerted one way or the other the more the Members of the Oireachtas are forced into making up their own minds. Perhaps that is a good thing.

I have made my decision both as a public representative and as an individual. In that regard I tried to take cognisance of one very important thing. I was reminded of it today when I heard Senator Martin speak about the man on the 46A bus and when Senator Quinn interrupted him to ask what about the woman on the 46A bus. The majority in this and the other House are men and perhaps it is easier for us to make a decision in relation to family planning or contraception than it might be for women. In arriving at my decision I tried to think of how a woman, who by God's design is the child-bearing half of any partnership, would view this issue and how a woman must view many of the remarks and contributions made in both Houses in the course of several debates on this matter.

I have considered this matter, not only as a Member of the Oireachtas and as a male, but as a member of the second largest local authority in the country for the past ten years, as someone who is serving for the third time as chairman of that local authority. In that regard I can claim to have a fair degree of practical political experience, experience of meeting people and of encountering the social problems of modern Ireland. I hope it was that experience as a public representative in that authority that made me think of the role of the woman in this issue, which made me think of the woman with a non-caring demanding husband, which made me think of a woman whose very health is endangered if she conceives again, which made me think of the woman with a large family —perhaps a wife living in fear, misery and suffering occasioned by the large, poorly off, badly-housed family.

On several occasions I have seen the consequent resentment of the further unwanted pregnancy and I have seen the deterioration in marital relations and in living standards that can be occasioned by a further unwanted pregnancy and by the attitude displayed to the children who arrive from those unwanted pregnancies. Many speakers have said that such women have not got the financial or mental resources to find out the ways in which they can get contraceptives and endeavour to make their lives tolerable. Senator Martin said the fat cats are able to look after themselves. Let us be quite honest about it. The ordinary man or woman will be able to look after themselves. If they decide to use contraceptives they will be able to seek a method of having contraceptives made available to them. The people who are not so well educated or so well equipped will find it difficult. In this regard I cannot call on personal experience, but it must be the person from that social grouping, in rural Ireland especially, who has difficulty in regard to the methods of regulating the size of her family for the good of her husband, her children and herself.

As a member of a local authority I have seen many young couples starting out in life—most of us would agree that they start out in an increasingly difficult and more financially onerous way—to purchase a home. Both of the partners of the marriage want to continue in employment for a couple of years until they manage to get enough money to run their home in a basic form of human decency. I have seen the worry and fear experienced by them when the first pregnancy arrives earlier than they would have wished. But that is not to say that those young couples did not want to be parents, did not want to be Irish parents, did not want, as so often advanced, to be Catholic parents. Of course they did. They wanted to provide a home and the basic standards of decent living before their family arrived. Are we to deny them the right to plan when their family arrives?

From time to time there has been a call from the public for a referendum on this matter. There is no need for a referendum on this matter any more than a need for a referendum on a number of matters. The most important referendum is held on average every three-and-a-half years to elect people to the other House, and in various ways people are elected or appointed to this House. The people who are elected represent the decent cross-section of the people. I hope the debate in this House will show the different views honestly held by people who represent the general view of the community.

Underlying this debate is the question of religious beliefs, the religious teachings of various churches and because of the religious beliefs of the majority in this part of the country, the teachings of the Catholic Church especially. As far as I can see there are as many different views among the theologians and churchmen as there are various methods of contraception. It is very difficult for anyone to say with clarity that this is right or this is wrong. I do not consider myself to be better or worse than any other Catholic. I cannot see the validity or the logic in an argument that allows for an imperfect method of contraception with the full blessing of the Church, the rhythm method, and asserts that other safer and more healthy methods are not only a mortal sin but that a married couple practising them are apparently to be condemned to hell fire for evermore. I cannot see the validity or logic in that as an individual member of that Church.

On the other hand, the question has been raised as to what legislation is or what legislation should do. I do not believe that many members of the Oireachtas expect legislation to force an individual to be a better person. None of us can force anyone else to be a better person against his will. Neither can legislation force anyone to be a better person against his will. All legislation can do is impose limits, impose a set of checks and balances, set certain standards of public morality and protect the individual against the excesses of others, guarantee certain rights for them. Legislation cannot make him a better man. It might be able to prevent him from committing certain acts for fear of the penalties and punishment. Legislation might not make him a worse fellow but I do not believe it can make him a better fellow. It cannot guarantee that he will observe the rules of his church or whatever church happens to be the majority church at the time. It certainly cannot dictate in regard to his private morality. That point has been clearly demonstrated by the decision of the Supreme Court on the constitutional case which is fundamental to the whole argument and the debate that has been going on for the last few years. The decision of the Supreme Court enforces that viewpoint.

We are consequently left with a law which is lacking and unenforceable. Any law which is unenforceable is a farce and needs to be changed in the interests of the law and the community. Indeed, it is a farcical law that makes married couples criminals for determining their relationship. That is the situation that exists. It is fair to say that Senator Martin seemed to hint that the present situation since the Supreme Court decision in the McGee case is an improvement on the situation that existed prior to it, but it is not by any means a satisfactory or perfect situation. I believe that it is still correct to regularise the law. As I mentioned earlier, I prepared these notes before Christmas, and that is the note that I made then.

I read in today's Irish Press the report of a speech made by the Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Most Reverend James Kavanagh, speaking on pluralism in religion in Our Lady's School in Templeogue. Dr. Kavanagh is reported as saying that public order should include two elements—an order of justice to safeguard the right of all citizens and an order of morality to ensure that certain minimum standards of public morality were enforced. It goes on to say that Dr. Kavanagh, when questioned about the introduction of divorce and contraception laws, said that it would only be politically wise to do something about these matters if the North were integrated with the South. He felt that the situation regarding the use of contraceptives was strange since it was possible to import them. “I think that these (contraceptives) should be legalised in the sense of being regularised”, Dr. Kavanagh is reported as saying. I presume the Auxiliary Bishop's remark in relation to contraceptives being regularised applies to this State, whether or not there is integration with the North. The newspaper report does not make it clear but the general tenor of the Bishop's remarks indicates that he believes, and appears to have stated publicly, that the law in relation to contraception in this State should be regularised.

Members of the Seanad will remember receiving a letter several years ago from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland telling us they too were in favour of a Bill to change the law in this country in regard to contraception.

I suggest we adjourn until 6 o'clock.

I do not see any reason for doing that. We have adopted the method of sitting through tea until 8.30 p.m. If the Senator speaking, Senator Boland, would like the Tánaiste to be here we could adjourn for a quarter of an hour while he goes to the other House. I can see no reason why we should adjourn for longer than that.

Business suspended at 5.50 p.m. and resumed at 6.05 p.m.

Before the suspension of business, I referred to the fact that some years ago the Presbyterian Church in Ireland had written to the Members of the Seanad, urging us to change the law in regard to contraception and saying that they as a church were in favour of some change in that law. I believe that we cannot and should not endeavour to legislate for private morality. It is up to an individual's conscience and to his religious beliefs, and that respect for the law alone will not in any way interfere with people's consciences or their religious beliefs in that they exercise their own private morality. Indeed if the religious beliefs of the Irish people are as deeply held as those who are fanatically opposed to any measure to change the law in this regard, if those beliefs are as deeply held as opponents would have us believe, then they would have no worry about any effect of a change of the law in this regard.

It is unfortunate that various people, in an effort to advance the cause of a change in the law, have put forward the viewpoint that it was necessary that we change this, if for no other reason than that we would be seen to be treating the minority religion fairly. It is both unfair to the Legislature and unfair to the members of the minority religion that they should be used as a lever in this way. I say that as someone who is in favour of a change in the law but in favour of it because I believe it is right. I do not think it is fair that any person who has a religious belief that is not shared by the majority in the country should be held up and used as a lever in an attempt to persuade the majority to go along.

It is an equally disputed argument to say that by changing the law in this regard it will bring about reconciliation with Northern Ireland. Of course it will not and it is a childish thing to suggest that it will. It may in some small measure help to bring about a closer understanding with people in Northern Ireland but it does the advocates of change for that reason alone no credit whatsoever to put forward that as a reason.

There have been attempts made on the part of those who oppose liberalisation of the law in regard to family planning, including especially churchmen, to link issues such as divorce, abortion, sterilisation and euthenasia with contraception and, just as I said, to put forward the attitude of the minority or the idea of reconciliation with Northern Ireland on the part of those who are in favour of a change in the law. That does those people no credit. It certainly does no credit whatsoever to those who oppose a change in the family planning legislation in Ireland to endeavour to bring these outside issues into the debate, neither them nor their cause, when they are speaking apparently on behalf of or from their respective pulpits. I resent going to a religious service and having such emotive and hysterical arguments being propagated to the congregation of which I am a member, apparently in the name of God. I do not believe that that can be fairly put forward. I resent equally, as I said previously, being bombarded in the post by either the proponents or opponents of the measure.

I was looking today at the file or correspondence that I have had over the years largely from the opponents, apparently well-tutored opponents. They think along such exceptionally similar lines that their letters can be regarded as identical. I resent the letters telling me such from the League of Decency—even the appeal of Christ's Vicar on Earth had no effect it seems, even though he spoke for Jesus Christ, the redeemer and judge. I resent being told that I was supporting a Bill which was a licence to corrupt. I resent being told that Communist countries are counting on the West to rot and then they can effect a takeover. This is the sort of thing that we as legislators are being asked to take seriously. I resent being sent a photograph in colour of an aborted embryo. That sort of thing I do not think should be sent in an effort to influence Members of the Oireachtas in this regard. There is another letter!

If you support or allow this Bill to be passed in our Senate then you will be directly responsible for countless murders. Do you want to be known as a murderer? You will be if you support this Bill, and no amount of water will wash your hands or your conscience clean of its guilt.

This is not the sort of thing in this day and age that should have to be said when an Irish House of the Oireachtas is debating what is basically an issue of private morality. The highest court of the land has stated that a piece of legislation passed by the Oireachtas many years ago is repugnant to the Constitution. It surely is reducing to an absurdity the arguments against regularising that law to issue arguments like that to Members of the House, asking them to take it seriously.

I believe it has been said that people generally have decided and decided for themselves, and this so often happens with the Legislature in certain areas when it passes laws which would help to lead the people. Eventually because of accepted public opinion or practice laws have to be changed. In this regard not only the people but the court have indicated to the Oireachtas that the law was repugnant in certain regards. If I am not mistaken, in the judgment handed down in the McGee case the court also indicated clearly that if a similar case was taken in regard to the sale of contraceptives they would almost certainly find the law to be repugnant in that matter also. That being the case—it is perhaps surprising that a case has not been taken—surely there devolves on us an obligation to see that the law should be regularised. Ordinary decent average Irish people have decided that they will make up their own minds on this issue and that they are quite prepared to face their priests and their God and account for their actions. So too am I, and if He is as fairminded as I am told and as I believe, then I do not believe He will fault me solely because of my support for a change in the law in this matter.

I am voting for this because I think it is the right thing to do. My conscience tells me that it is something that needs to be done and I offer no apologies to anybody for coming to that conclusion. I respect the sincerely held belief of those who disagree with me. I have nothing but contempt for those who have adopted certain public stances because they think it might earn them political success, and I am afraid there is a small element of that as well.

The Tánaiste today was careful to point out that he was putting out his invitation in his capacity as Leader of the Labour Party. He was inviting parliamentarians of all political parties, all shades of opinion, to discuss informally the preparing and agreeing of consensus legislation to regularise the law in regard to the matter of family planning. I strongly support that and even more strongly urge on him and on the leaders and members of the political parties that they might endeavour to extend that, as I suggested, not just to discuss informally the area of family planning but to remove from the centre of the political stage the entire area of private morality and of family law, so that it can be discussed and debated and brought into present-day context and into realistic terms, so that we will have legislation that we can be proud of, that will allow for the greatest degree of freedom consistent with public order and public morality. The real way that that can be done is by removing it from the political party arena and removing it from the electoral stage. If we could consider an extension of the invitation put forward by the Tánaiste today to have an all-party committee set up that would make recommendations for consensus legislation that would update the law in relation to private morality, then this will have been a very useful discussion indeed.

The welcomed intervention by the Tánaiste this afternoon pre-empted a good deal of what I intended to say. What I have to say will help to highlight one of the points made in his address, and that was that not alone were there differences between political parties in this regard but differences within parties themselves. I want to state clearly that I propose to vote against this Bill. I do so because I conscientiously believe this is not the answer to what is a very sensitive and complex problem. I listened with great care and attention, and a good deal of sympathy, to the various views expressed by Senators this afternoon and I give those who spoke full credit for speaking honestly in support of the views they hold. I hope the same charity will be extended to me and the few words I have to say.

This is without question a very difficult area for any politician. The Tánaiste has highlighted that. It has been found impossible on several occasions in the past number of years to arrive at a consensus. Unfortunately politics have intruded on the scene to bedevil the situation further so that we now have a situation where if a person stands up and expresses views opposed to legislation such as this he is accused of being a reactionary, a square, against the workers' rights, interfering in matters of private morals and so on. I am not a theologian, very far from it, and quite frankly I do not mind admitting my ignorance, but I find it very difficult at times to judge where the demarcation line lies between private and public morals. I sincerely believe that the use of artificial contraceptives is wrong. I know that we are not supposed to talk about the moral law here, that we are merely concerned with legislation, but I suppose all of us subscribe to the moral law to a greater or lesser extent, and I think most of us would like to think that we are guided by the moral law in every aspect of our lives.

Without wishing to be sanctimonious I think most Senators who spoke this afternoon would regard themselves as acting within their consciences and not in conflict with the moral law. It is true, and several Senators have said it, that there are anomalies in the present situation which the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the McGee case has highlighted. The present situation is not satisfactory. As the Tánaiste mentioned, it is possible, in theory at least, to import contraceptives for distribution in this State provided they were purchased outside the State. That is obviously an unsatisfactory situation. But I question whether passing a Bill such as this to legalise, to put the Government imprimatur on the importation or the manufacture, distribution and sale of contraceptives, will make the position any better. How is it proposed to control the further importation of contraceptive devices even if this legislation becomes law? I do not see how it can be done.

Further, I do not see how you are going to limit the sale of contraceptives, as has been suggested, to married people only and to certain established outlets? Health boards were suggested in the other House. Chemist shops have been suggested; and where there were not chemist shops other outlets have been suggested. Quite frankly I do not think that one can control the sale and the use of contraceptives and I think the issue the Legislature has got to face is the free availability of contraceptives to anybody in the State. That is the situation, as I see it. I may be wrong. It may be wrong. It may be possible to control them to an extent that they do not fall into the wrong hands, but I doubt that.

There are problems, very severe and pressing problems in our society today created by us, because we created the society in which we live in today. I doubt whether, as has been suggested —I hope I am not misinterpreting what some of the Senators said—these problems can be solved automatically by the availability of artificial contraceptives. I think that the problems in our society today run deeper than that, I am one of those who share the view that before very long this demand for availability of contraceptives will be followed by the right of people to have abortion on demand. After all, who would have thought a few years ago that Italy would pass by a majority in its parliament a law legalising abortion? Who would have believed it possible to read, as I read in a responsible magazine, about this great progressive social legislation? I know that people who spoke in here in favour of regularising the availability of contraceptives have thrown up their hands in horror at the idea that they would have anything to do with the idea of legalising abortion.

Unfortunately the whole history of these developments has followed a fairly well set pattern. We have contraception, divorce, abortion, euthanasia, all for the betterment of our society. Have we examined the situation in depth in other countries to ensure that in fact these liberal laws have made those societies happier? Are people happier in other countries where they have these liberal permissive laws. I often question it.

Whether we like it or not—I am not in a position to say what proportion of the population they represent—we still have in this country a lot of ordinary, decent, God-fearing people who are absolutely opposed to the introduction of the type of legislation we are talking about here this afternoon. They may be regarded as reactionary and old fashioned, out of touch with modern society, but those of them I know I would regard as among the cream of our society— people who have married and brought up their families in a truly Christian manner and have sent their children out into the world armed with the important things in life to withstand the temptations of life that young people find all around them today. Those people are there. I do not know whether they form a minority. Maybe they are the unprogressive minority, but they are there and most of them are very fine people, fine citizens, law-abiding, honourable and bringing up their families in what they regard as the interpretation of God's laws.

I do not think we can ignore them. I feel that inherent in the proposal of the Tánaiste was a willingness to allow legislators who represent these people at least to have their say in finding what he is seeking to find among our political parties, and that is a possible consensus. I do not know if you can find such a consensus. Frankly I have my doubts, but at least I think we should try and I think that the offer made by the Tánaiste is worthy of serious consideration and for my part, certainly, I would welcome a move along those lines.

I should like to add that I would sincerely like to see the Fianna Fáil Party participating in an all-party committee such as that. Politics is politics and none of us at times can resist the temptation to have a go at our political opponents, to score a political point. But this is a particularly sensitive and delicate area. I do not think it should be the plaything of politics. There should be a situation where men and women of our political parties would sit down together and in all honesty try to find a consensus for their different but honestly held views. For that reason I welcome the Táanaiste's intervention. I welcome the proposal he has made and I hope it will be accepted. I know cynical interjections were made while he was making his proposal but we are all politicians and we must have regard to the fact that we represent the different sectors in our society, many of who think differently.

It has been suggested by one of the interjections to which I have referred that it is the duty of the Government to govern. Certainly it is and I do not think this Government have shirked taking very unpopular measures in the interests of the safety of this State and the preservation of democracy. They have demonstrated their willingness to do important things, but they realise that this is a particularly difficult situation and that whipping Deputies into the lobbies to vote Tá or Níl as the case may be is not the answer to the situation.

For that reason I join with other Deputies who have given a welcome to the Tánaiste's proposal. I appeal to the largest party in the Dáil to join with the others in seeking to find an acceptable solution to what is a very difficult, a very sensitive and a very complex problem.

Other Senators asked for tolerance and understanding of their views and so do I. Let me state quite clearly and openly that, apart from the fact that it is Labour Party policy, I personally believe in the right of freedom of conscience for married people to use contraceptive methods. I do not say that to fly in the face of religion because I believe most people who hear me speaking will know that I am a God-fearing man and probably will die the same way. However, coming from the background I came from, as a person who had to leave Ireland in 1937—40 years ago —and having regard to the numbers of people who emigrated prior to that and were exposed to the sort of circumstances and situations that I found myself in, it seems to me now very funny to hear some of the very narrow views that have been put. We exported people to Great Britain, particularly into the armed forces, both before and during the war. When you arrived in a recruiting office on the other side, there were slot machines with contraceptives available in them. That was 40 years ago.

It depends on one's environment. I can well understand the feelings of the people who are against this Bill. We have great regard now as to how we will protect our people. In the past we did not care what we were sending them out to. The things we are arguing about now that we should protect them from, we actually sent them out to them and actually exposed them to those things not only in the United Kingdom but in many other parts of the world. So, this is why I ask for understanding of my point of view. It is very difficult for us to say, on the one hand, that we have been sending our people away and exposing them to circumstances and situations with regard to this question of contraception for a very substantial period of our time in self-Government and, on the other hand, that we are arguing at home about trying to protect them from the things we have been exporting them to.

I think everyone will understand why I feel a bit astonished at the narrow concepts. It does not matter whether or not we legislate. We will not prevent the use of contraceptives. I would like to see control and I would like to see it taken on the kind of initiative the Tánaiste has proposed here today. Like Senator Russell, I hope that all parties, particularly the major party, will see their way to come into those discussions to resolve the problem once and for all. We argue very strongly about nationalism but we are members of the EEC now and we are exposed to the world as a whole. We are only an hour's flight from London and only a couple of hours flight away from America. The pace of technology has changed so much that we can be involved and exposed to conditions in other countries very rapidly.

What is the position in other countries? In the world as a whole approximately 78 million people are alleged to be on the pill. We also find that in the undeveloped countries, for example, in 1963—the only figures I have available to me at the moment —125 million babies were born. In other words, 238 every minute or four every second. In countries where there was no production they had to embark on policies that helped people towards family planning in order to keep down the population.

I am not saying that we in Ireland must follow exactly what happens in any other country. I am saying we can talk about the legislation here all the time but we have very little chance of getting it. That is why I think the Minister's initiative is a very good one. If we do not get legislation we will continue to allow our people to be exposed to places where those things are freely available. We do not mind exposing them to such places outside the country but we have the argument that we will create a completely promiscuous society if we do not actually take some stringent methods to stop contraceptives.

In Latin America the situation got so bad and the people were so worried about the matter that they had to bring in legislation. Between 1925 and 1962 their population soared to its present figure of about 218 million. It very nearly doubled and, because they were a deprived people they had to do something about it. Food production had not increased from 1939 to 1962 in the Latin American countries.

I cannot see any real reason for not bringing in legislation here. The people who settle down in Ireland and who have not lived abroad for years, like the other people I referred to earlier on, by and large are people who can be trusted in the sense of whether they will abuse or over-abuse contraceptives. We are codding the Irish people by standing up and debating something which we really know in our hearts and souls we will hardly have a chance of getting through unless the Minister's initiative is agreed to. I think we should bear that particular point in mind.

It is not only a question of whether one should regularise the situation with regard to the McGee case in the Supreme Court or whether one should argue that people should be able to make up their own minds and therefore should not be inhibited by legislation or otherwise. No matter which way one looks at it, we can introduce certain types of control. I think the Bill before the House actually has a lot of the necessary controls. If it came to a vote on the Bill I would vote for it. On the other hand, I have regard to the peculiar circumstances of the society we are living in and the difficulties that arise when one raises matters of conscience, even in a committee. You present some people with a problem if you raise matters of conscience. As I said at the beginning, I do not have this problem of conscience about contraceptives. At the same time I do not think I have the right to deny any other married couple the right to plan their family in the proper way.

The Billing's Method was spoken about at length and Senator Lyons referred to it again today. It would meet a lot of the arguments if the scientists who are now going to look at it in greater depth and who got a grant from the World Health Organisation could come up with something more effective than the present position with regard to the use of the Billing's Method. Then it would be easier for a lot of people. It is not a good reason for not speaking out if something presents difficulties or somebody levels a finger at one. We cannot get away from the economics side of it because people who plan their families do so for economic reasons. In many cases they cannot afford to meet the present-day commitments of life. They want the means by which they can regulate their families. They do this in the interests of seeing that their children will get a decent career and that they will have a better life than they had.

If people were not using contraceptives, I wonder how long it would take, because of the stem of emigration and because of the natural increase in population, to double our population? I do not think it would take a century. This is another economic reason.

Would it be a bad thing?

The Senator spoke for two hours and I did not interrupt him.

Would it be a bad thing to double our population?

If we were all going to starve, and if there were no jobs, yes.

We are the most thinly populated country in Europe.

I do not agree. I want people to understand me when I am making the arguments, because I have no qualms about the matter and I know the way I will vote. I want to be understood the same as the people who have the other view want to be understood. I know that religion is an ineradicable thing in human beings. It is an ineradicable thing in me and, therefore, I know that it is the same in a lot of people. I am not saying that it is easy for people to agree with what I say. People have to have faith in something. They have got to think of their destiny. I do not think legislation will affect people's consciences, because they are free to accept contraception or not to accept them. This Bill will not stop them.

We all have attitudes. I am no different from anyone else just because I agree with this measure, I have an attitude to what I consider to be bad. There are a lot of things I consider to be bad, there are a lot of things I consider to be wonderful, and there are other things I consider to be ugly. I do not see anything ugly in this. It is ugly to have the Supreme Court—"ugly" might not be the best word for it—ruling on something and that the situation is not regulated by the Legislature. The people will test it further in the courts. That is all the more reason why we should think seriously about the initiative that the Tánaiste has put to us.

We are all here to help people. We hear all sorts of problems from people, particularly from women who have bad marriages and are living in very bad conditions. For example, there is the situation in which a deserted wife cannot claim against her husband. She is in desperate straits. Now and again there is a reconciliation and the next thing is that another child is born and he leaves again. That is just one case but if we multiply the different aspects of that we will see the kind of hardship and problems that are created.

Many people lobbied us during the last debate, some of them for and some against. I am not an evil person and I do not think the things I do are ugly. I do not think that by asking the Seanad to support the Bill I am getting away from the environment I am living in, because it depends on where you walk. If you walk certain places you will not see the problems. If you shut your mind off the problem will not be there either.

It is easy enough to say there are methods whereby people are safe and you do not have to resort to contraceptives. People are human. They cannot wait. If they really have an attraction to each other it is somewhat ridiculous to say: "Hang on, I will be ready in four days' time". That is the nonsense of it. That is the difficulty I see with the Billing's Method. I hope the scientists who are examining this matter now can find a better solution.

The other point I should like to make is that I do not sit in this House as a Catholic; I sit in this House as a legislator. We are not here to legislate for Catholics alone. If there were no other denominations in the country I would not have a different view. I would still hold the view I expressed at the beginning whether this was a 100 per cent Catholic nation or not. I will not stand up here and be dishonest, I do not care what the price is in that respect. That is how I think and that is how I feel. I believe everybody else has spoken honestly, I am speaking honestly.

I understand that there is a sizeable proportion, myself included, who disapprove of the use of contraceptives but I do not disapprove of the right of people, who wish to plan a family, to have them made available to them. If somebody asked me if I approved of the use of contraceptives I would answer: "No, I do not". I do not believe in people being denied the right to use them. That is the distinction. As a Catholic I say that. There are Catholics who say that it is a private matter between the husband and wife. Again there are Catholics who never concern themselves with the views of the Church or the views of anyone except those which suit their own particular whim. I am not saying that legislation should be brought in to suit the latter category who have no regard for the Church or anything else.

We should not blind ourselves to the fact that these categories exist. There are people like myself who support the rights of people to have them available to them and who, in general, do not agree with the use of them. There are other people who believe it is a matter of conscience between man and wife and there are those who could not care less. We seem to ignore the fact that we have people who do not care. We are not talking about legislation for those. We are trying to legislate for people in general. As long as we do not do something about the ruling of the Supreme Court on the McGee case then we are not living up to our responsibilities. We are shirking our responsibilities and living in hope that nothing might happen for a long time but then, in a piecemeal fashion, people would start getting the matter resolved by access to the courts again.

I cannot understand—perhaps I am a bit crazy—where all the fears lie. Somebody said earlier that this is an election year. There were a few jibes from the other side of the House but that does not mean that I do not appreciate that there are fears. I cannot understand why there should be so much fear about legislating for something on which the Supreme Court has made a ruling or that we, as a legislative body, because we are involved with the people as a whole, are full of anxiety and preoccupation because we think that if we support this Bill many people will turn their backs on us and say: "Shame on you, you are not getting any votes in this area." That is underestimating the intelligence of the people.

The people, in the long run, on this measure will judge us possibly for our frankness and openness on it, whether we are for or against it, rather than on the issue that we should not have said something. They will say: "He stood up and spoke his piece; he did it openly and so far as I am concerned he was quite correct to state his case and I will not hold that against him". If we do otherwise it is an insult to the intelligence of Irish men and women, particularly the women. I have been travelling the country quite a lot and I would not attempt to underestimate the intelligence of the women throughout the country. I am satisfied that I will not suffer anything from being blunt and frank about this measure.

I have, because of my background and my trade union involvement, had to practise the art of diplomacy. When somebody raises a problem which is a matter of conscience for him I can see that I must be as sympathetic as possible towards him. Therefore, I sincerely suggest that there is nothing to fear in the Minister for Health's initiative this evening. There is no reason why they cannot engage themselves in the most thorough discussion to see that effective legislative measures are introduced to get rid of the laughable situation we have, that the Court ruled in one direction and we have done nothing to back it up but allowed very irregular situations to remain. If we do nothing about it it will actually get worse. Once there is no control or follow up and the ruling is there we are inviting trouble. People will actually go into court, I believe they will win again on other aspects of the situation if we are not seen to do something about it effectively and not in a sham sort of way. We should let the people see that we are sincere about it.

In this type of debate, when one is troubled with the evidence of human suffering, I begin to wonder if this will cause dull people to shake off their stupor and make them bright. We are not talking about that kind of legislation. We are talking about something that might make their problem less acute. We are not trying to solve all the problems of human suffering that exist.

Instead of making the problems less acute we are making them more difficult. I was pleased to hear the Leader of the Labour Party offer the initiative, as Leader of the Labour Party and not as the Minister for Health, to help people who are in this dilemma get over it. If we accept this suggestion we can take a step towards making the problems of these people less acute. They may not be solved, but they will be made less acute.

We are not talking about trying to extract wealth from the people who have it to give it to somebody else. We are talking strictly about human suffering, the right of people to decide in conscience whether they will use contraceptive methods to plan their families. They have the right to do this. They have the right to think out how their family should be planned. We should facilitate them by introducing proper measures and controls and making contraceptives available to married people. In that way we would be contributing to the economic welfare of families and parents would be able to educate their children properly. They would be able to provide their children with greater opportunities to take on greater skills.

The argument has been advanced that this might change the conformity to the moral code of those who do conform, but we must understand that a lot of people do not conform. When we are talking about this Bill we seem to think people are perfect. We forget that there are a lot of evil people. It is not my argument that because they are evil people we should legislate to facilitate them. I am making the argument that we should facilitate people who want to control and regulate something for them. There are decent people who want to decide by their own conscience whether it is right or wrong to use contraceptives, but if they wish to use them we should make them available in a legal way.

One speaker suggested it would be just and merciful not to deal with this Bill; that we should leave it and do nothing about it or try to avoid voting on it. There is nothing just or merciful about leaving people dangling in mid-air when they have certain rights. The bulk of those people have a full appreciation that their expression of personality and freedom of thought has to be done within the limits of the rights of other people. It comes down to another argument when we deny people this other right. Are we expressing our freedom of personality and expression by imposing a limit on them or are we conforming to their rights as individuals and as citizens? On the one hand we argue that they are overlapping to the point where some of us are claiming that this freedom of expression impinges on the rights of others. It does not. If married couples decide that they want to use contraceptives there is no question of usurping the rights of anyone else.

I gathered on the last occasion that some speakers believed that was the situation. It is not the situation. We are not trying to impose, by supporting this legislation or being the advocates of it, our personality or our freedom of thoughts in a way that has no regard to the limits imposed on us by other people. We are saying that there is something wrong; we are imposing a limit on other people. Let us bring the decision of the Supreme Court into proper perspective and let the people who have difficulties in this area understand that the Legislature is for their benefit and not to impose on them the need to go outside the law to get their rights in society. I do not think that is the general intention but the net effect of that attitude will result in that. Consequently, we are going to be in difficulties again with the Supreme Court on other aspects if we do not have regard to the points made by myself and many Senators.

There were many good contributions from the Opposition on the last occasion and great sympathy in the Fianna Fáil ranks. The difficulty was finding a way. The initiative that the Tánaiste has taken today, as Leader of the Labour Party, is welcome. I do not think we are going to have that much of a problem or that the fears we have been expressing about driving the country mad will bear fruit. If we follow the Tánaiste's initiative I am sure everybody will be satisfied. We all owe it to our people who want to see this legislation put on the Statute Book to follow that initiative.

In the course of this debate so far we have had three speakers who indicated that they oppose the measures proposed in the Bill and, on a rough count, we have had nine or ten speakers who indicated that they favoured the proposals to a greater or lesser degree. That might lead one to believe that there was a majority in the House in favour of this proposal. I have no way of knowing what the outcome of the vote if and when it is taken, might be, but I must listen to the view expressed by the Tánaiste when he gave it as his opinion that a measure of this type would have very little success in passing through both Houses of the Oireachtas and becoming law. Therefore, I, like the previous speaker and other Senators, welcome very much the initiative the Tánaiste has taken in that it may give an opportunity in a non-political arena, a non-political atmosphere, to resolve what is a very crucial political situation that we are in.

I mentioned that three speakers had indicated that they do not agree with the proposals in the Bill. I respect very much what they said about them and the reasons they gave for not accepting them. I also respect them for the fact that they let the House know their views. I find it sad, as other Senators said, that the major political party in the country have taken the view they have in this debate. They provided a Government for this country for the greater part of its life as a free State and had 16 years continuously in office prior to 1973. I feel a great deal of sympathy for some members of that party who in a previous debate indicated their views. But they as a party, for whatever reasons, have chosen to remain silent with the exception of one speaker who gave what obviously was a decision taken elsewhere as to what the view of that party would be.

Like other Senators, I should like to ask them to respond in a more positive way to the initiative spelled out by the Leader of the Labour Party this evening. The Tánaiste outlined the situation as it is now and as it was prior to the decision of the Supreme Court on the McGee case, and I do not think I can add much to what he said on the present situation except to make one further addition. The Tánaiste stated that it was always the situation, and it is now, that there was no legal prohibition on the manufacture of contraceptives in Ireland. I take it that that means we are in a position where any industrialist can set up a factory to produce these goods. This might be with or without a grant from the Industrial Development Authority, money raised from the taxpayers. Senator O'Higgins found it repugnant to him as a taxpayer that the health services might, under the terms of this Bill if passed, be involved in distributing contraceptives. It offended his moral principles and his conscience. He has not made the point that they should not be manufactured here. I do not attribute bad motives to Senator O'Higgins on this, but it is a point that was not made and therefore I make it. These goods would presumably be exported—they cannot, as the law stands be sold here—with presumably the the benefits of tax relief. People would earn their living producing these goods and the Irish moral conscience in 1977 does not find this repugnant.

We could always use contraceptives; there was nothing illegal about them. We could manufacture them; and since the McGee case decision they can be imported but we cannot have information available. To have one without the other is highly dangerous from a health point of view. It is scandalous that we are in a position that young children as the Tánaiste said, can import contraceptives but they cannot get adequate information on the dangers involved in using them. I do not think any Member of this or the other House can be happy about this position. I do not think Senator O'Higgins, Senator Quinlan or Senator Russell are happy about it. In fact, Senator Russell stated in this House that the position was very unsatisfactory.

I should like to talk about what we are really concerned about—and the Tánaiste again used the phrase—a fundamental human right. It is a right for a woman to control her reproductive capacity; a right for a couple to choose the number they will have in their family. I do not think it is for this Legislature to deny anybody that right.

Other Senators have spoken about the different methods of contraception and, indeed, I go quite a distance with Senator Quinlan on what he said about the natural, as he called it, method, now known as the Billings Method. I welcome the investigation and research that will be done into that method. I doubt if there is any person who would not prefer the natural method, as it is called, than what is labelled an artificial method, but we must query the efficacy of that method. We must query the availability, at the moment certainly, of education in that method and, indeed, in the Irish context at least, we must query the capability of people to avail of that method.

Sometimes I wonder when we are involved in debates in this House if we tend to get away a little far from the sheer human reality of the situations we debate. I know Senator O'Higgins and Senator Russell are experienced in political life and Senator Quinlan is the longest continuously serving Member of this House, but perhaps in his position he may not have been brought into as much day-to-day conflict with the human situation. Some time before I had the honour of being elected to this House I worked in the housing department of the largest local authority in this country and day after day we saw tragic cases of human suffering, people waiting on the housing list. I invite the opponents of this measure to think of the situation of a married couple with a family living as a subtenant in a corporation house in this city. They have approximately 400 cubic feet in which to eat, sleep, make love and rear their children. I ask Senator Quinlan if he thinks it is reasonable, just or possible that a woman living in such a flat can study her charts and use her thermometer. Frankly, it is impossible, probably immoral to expect that. Equally, when one looks at the rural situation, where they may not be as confined for space, we know of cases of women in rural areas who cannot control the size of their family.

I know of one instance of a woman whose husband will not allow her to use contraceptives. She is of an age where the doctor cannot prescribe the pill as a regulator because he knows the danger to her health. She has a large family and regularly, with assistance from a relation in Dublin, travels to the city to a family planning clinic. She is not doing that for selfish reasons. She is doing it because she wants to be able to survive to rear the children she has. By not making contraceptives available we are perpetuating her suffering. It is probably true to say though in the present situation that people who have sufficient education and sufficient finance can get contraceptives here. There are many ways—I do not have to enumerate them—but for the people who have not got that facility the situation is harsh and very harsh.

In this respect, I am reminded of a book I read many years ago which was written by a journalist. It is the diary of a poor woman who lived in a shanty town outside Rio de Janeiro. She had a family but her husband had deserted her. She worked as a charlady in what she called the red brick houses where the average family size was two children. A local missionary came around regularly to console and to help, as he thought, and he praised her for the work she was doing for God. Her reply which was very touching was: "Father, why is it that the poor always have to have the children? Why do the people in the red brick houses not have them?" That situation is very relevant to Irish society today.

Much has been said, and said more eloquently, about the Catholic Church's attitude. I am a member of that church and I would defend their right entirely to make their views known as strongly as they wish to the people in their flock, the members of their church. The church also say that on this issue it was a matter for the Legislature to decide and I do not think we can continue to hide behind the Catholic Church on this. They have said clearly what their views are and have said it is a matter for Parliament to decide.

On the question of public attitudes and whether this is something that would be favoured or even accepted by the Irish public at large, we are very much in danger of having public attitudes away ahead of what the Members of this House think. To many members of the public the politicians, on this issue, are just some sort of old fossils who are going on and on about something which they have resolved to their own satisfaction in many ways, certainly, as regards their own conscience they have it resolved. Young people decided some time ago that we are rather irrelevant on it, but some organisations have made official statements. It is significant that last July at their annual conference the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, when they adopted a charter on women's rights, adopted a clause in that charter which sought the full availability of family planning services and information and education on those for the trade union movement. I do not think they are what could be considered an insignificant group in this country.

Senator Boland, and before Christmas, Senator Browne, spoke about this problem and particularly, how relevant it is to women, and I do not think I could agree more with what they said. I deeply appreciate the contributions in support that have been made by many male colleagues on this, inside the Chamber and outside. I deeply appreciate the sympathy and compassion with which they have approached it. But, basically, it boils down to the fact that pregnancy is a woman's function. Could I ask all genuinely to answer a question? If the biological roles were reversed would the 1935 Act have gone on the Statute Book? Would we in 1977 be even talking about it? Frankly, I doubt it. I make that remark with all respect and admiration for my male colleagues. We are in a position that this is a predominantly male Legislature. There are three women in the Seanad against 57 men and I admire, individually, every one of those 57 men. But quite honestly, no matter how hard they try, it is very difficult if not well nigh impossible, for them to feel the same way as a woman can feel on this issue, because God gave them a different role than He gave us.

If we had even a better balance in the Legislature as between the sexes I do not think it would have taken us this long to resolve the issue. It is my sincere belief that we do not weaken the moral fibre of our people by passing a Bill such as this. If the moral fibre is that weak then we as a nation, and the Catholic Church, have greater problems than what the passing of this Bill will cause. On the contrary, by not facing up to the issue, by hiding behind the sort of attitude of public morality, by continuing the hypocrisy—and that is what it is— that exists today we are doing much more damage to the moral fibre of the nation.

As an opposite biological specimen to my colleague, Senator Owens, her last remarks make us males conscious of the problems that have confronted the female species in this land for some time because legislation of this kind has generally been decided by males. I agree that those who have suffered the pain and anguish, and joy at times, of childbirth would probably have a much more realistic contribution to make on a Bill such as this than any mere male species could do. As a married male I should like to contribute in a small way to the discussion on this Bill.

I speak firstly as a parent. After my wife in this world the most important person in my family is my daughter. It is a disgraceful situation that my ten-year-old daughter can as of now freely purchase booklets in Dublin, and possibly elsewhere, containing coupons which she can, and has the intelligence to do, complete and forward whatever amount of money is required to another country to import into Ireland contraceptives which can be used either for herself or her friends if she so wishes to distribute them. She can do so legally as the law stands here in 1977. That is a disgraceful situation. Males or females who have been responsible for legislation have allowed us to develop to that stage. They have been turning a blind eye to the realities that face parents of children of this age group. There are many such children who are possibly stooping to this, not because they think it is right or wrong but because they think it is fun, that it can be done legally and without being reprimanded by the law.

The difficulty in speaking on a subject such as this, particularly for a rural representative, is that once one speaks for a change in a law of this nature one possibly will be accused by the "holy marys" in the country of advocating the widespread use of contraceptives of all types, whether it be the pill or other mechanical devices. It is a pity that those who wish to contribute in an honest manner to this debate must be subjected to this.

This matter, which has got widespread publicity—more than it deserves —is an area basically of human rights and of freedom of conscience. In this glare of publicity it can be difficult to make a contribution without being accused of advocating the use of contraceptives. For that reason I compliment Senators Robinson and Horgan for having framed this legislation in a Private Members' Bill which would set out at least to regularise a situation, to put into proper context the availability of contraceptives and to do so on specific moral lines. Section 2 of the Bill reads:

A person shall not import for sale, sell, offer for sale or invite offers to purchase contraceptives unless he is the holder of a licence to sell granted under this section, and shall import for sale, sell, offer for sale or invite offers to purchase only such contraceptives (or such class or classes of contraceptives) as he is permitted to sell by such licence.

Section 3 specifically states that contraceptives shall not be manufactured except by a person who is the holder of a licence under this section. Any sane person looking at any piece of legislation, particularly in an area which has shown up the most extraordinary anomalies since the McGee case, will see that nothing could be fairer than to regularise this situation. It would prohibit the importation of contraceptives by teenage girls, my daughter and others.

It would not. Not this Bill. Importation is allowed under this Bill. It is only importation for sale that is prohibited.

It depends on what kind of contraceptives we are talking about. Some people consider the pill as a contraceptive but that is freely available to purchase and sell, or do with what you will. This Bill specifically states that the Minister concerned is the Minister for Health. It immediately puts responsibility into a field in which the Tánaiste, who is the Leader of our party and also the Minister for Health and Social Welfare, has a specific responsibility for the health and welfare of all the people, irrespective of what their own personal conscience may be. He must ensure that his responsibility extends to all members of the community irrespective of their religious beliefs. I do not advocate the use of contraceptives and hope they would never be used. I am not a doctor but as a member of the health board I concede that doctors can in certain circumstances prescribe contraceptives for specific health reasons. They are not available in this country. They must be purchased abroad or imported in this extraordinary way which is open at the moment to teenage children.

This is a specific responsibility. Indeed the Opposition in the Dáil, where the other Bill met its death, introduced this amendment from the previous Bill as a specific and well thought out change, asking that the sale, distribution and manufacture of contraceptives would be brought within the ambit of the health boards. I would be totally against the free sale of such commodities in slot machines in lounge bars, railway stations and so on. Nobody I have spoken to on this subject advocates that. Members of all parties support this Bill in principle because it makes an effort to regularise an extraordinary anomaly. We feel that it should be within the ambit of the health boards. In their community care programmes the health boards are currently confronted with many problems we are aware of. They have religious advisers who have advocated further research into the Billings Method. They have also recognised that there is a need in certain circumstances. Indeed, we are aware that many doctors of strong Catholic convictions advocate the availability of contraception, properly controlled, for specific cases. Those of us who do not advocate its use would concede that there are people who, morally and otherwise, consider that it is their right, and the courts have found that it is their right to have contraceptives available in their own country.

I also welcome the initiative of the Tánaiste today when he courageously said that the only possible chance he could see of this legislation getting through the Houses of the Oireachtas was for us to have all-party consultation on the subject. That is a challenge to all parties to sit down away from the glare of the publicity that tends to follow the subject and to discuss the full implications of this legislation. I am sure that the Leader of the House would have an opportunity to express his reservations—and he is entitled to them—to ensure that any legislation that would be enacted in this area would take cognisance of the situation and that no more anomalies would be thrown up by extraordinary court decisions. If we as legislators take no action, then only citizens who can really afford it can use contraceptives. The unfortunate people who may really need them—large families without a house, without enough to eat— are the people who have no information available to them and who have no finances to get to where there is information. These are the people we purport to speak for every day. But when it comes to this legislation we bury our heads in the sand and are afraid to offer our suggestions. For this reason I recommend that all the parties concerned in this House and the other House sit down conscientiously to try to overcome the political problems we have in settling our consciences. Everybody has a conscience. We, as legislators, must ensure that we legislate for everybody's conscience.

I speak today as a parent concerned about the situation. I would hope that the situation would be properly regularised so that this anomaly would not continue. If it comes to a vote there are some sections in this Bill I am not happy about but there are other sections that go a long way to meet some of the problems that I have highlighted. My conscience dictates that I should support it because it makes some effort to deal with those problems. But I sincerely hope that the offer of the all-party committee would be accepted and that some proper progress could be made in an area which we can no longer disregard. We cannot say: "I am married and I do not care about contraceptives." That is not the way to look at the problem. We must look to the future, particularly the future of our children.

This is the third occasion since I became a Member of Seanad Éireann that I have spoken on a debate which addresses itself to the change in the law that affects the family in Ireland. I should like to comment on a statement made by an Opposition Member, particularly with reference to Senator Robinson, that the Bill was being sponsored by a a recent Labour Party backbencher. I am glad to be speaking in support of this measure to which Senator Robinson has lent her name. She has initiated the legislative instruments and suggestions motivated by care for the community and, particularly, about redressing the position of woman in a society where woman's position has not been that of an equal. In the course of other pieces of legislation she has advanced the rights of institutionalised children and of other minority groups in general. Therefore, this is not a piece of legislation coming from a new backbencher. It is a piece of legislation prepared by a woman of immense ability and courage, in view of the response that this debate has had.

In that context we are discussing this measure this evening. It is appropriate too to make a comment on the atmosphere in general here in which this debate is being carried on. I remember commenting before that the debate is being prosecuted by probably a privileged section of the community. On average, be it in terms of criteria which need not be narrowly educational or otherwise but which can be in terms of shrewdness, the people who form both Houses of the Legislature are at an advantage in the community. They have some characteristics which select them from the community and which place them in either this House or the other. They legislate in general for the majority who do not possess such qualities or such acumen.

I said before that we can strike a righteous pose, which should be seen for what it is. It is the righteous pose of the privileged view of those who, by their legislative inaction or action, are making decisions which will have consequences upon the many. Members of the Labour Party have always spoken for that majority in the country, particularly for those sections which were most underprivileged and which for that reason were often not inarticulate in discussing this debate and the necessity of being allowed to plan their family.

It is important that this be borne in mind because, when one balances the legislation, it is necessary that one expresses clearly the criteria by which one wishes to judge. The legislation has to be judged at the end of the day on whether it is a piece of good law or not. How is it to be judged as good law? It is good law if in terms of its social impact it improves the situation of the populace. Here immediately an interesting question arises. What if it should be necessary legislation for even one citizen and it should be detested by a few people in the community? What then should the Legislature do? This has posed a question which faces legislatures in all democracies—the time when it comes to put law-making above popularity; to place law-making where it should be; to ask that the purpose of the law be to implement a courageous decision, even if it be unpopular. It is no argument to suggest that there is in the country in general a majority of people who are against this law and that one could somehow or another be influenced by some kind of survey mentality. What we have to decide is that if even a single individual were circumscribed in any way it would be our purpose as legislators to address ourselves to that situation.

It is interesting to bear in mind how, in the Tánaiste's invitation to Members of all parties, he makes reference, correctly, to the McGee case; what has happened in the McGee case; the situation it has placed us in. Is it to the credit of our Legislature that Mrs. McGee had to go through the courts? To those who suggest that they oppose this legislation from a conservative viewpoint, from a viewpoint which often stresses the primacy of the institutions of State, that unbroken weave in the fabric of society which continues in a society from one stage to another, if they say that, what then of an institution and the participants therein that lets itself down and that fires onto the courts and that fires onto Mrs. McGee the appalling obligation of appearing before the courts, seeking aid, being advised, sustaining her own physical and emotional ability to go through these legal proceedings because Legislatures in the past did not put the law right? Those who say —and I cannot take it very seriously— that they will legislate in this area when they have a majority, when they form the Government, must be faced with the question: why when they had power did they make it necessary for Mrs. McGee to force the Legislature to have a debate, not once but many times in this House?

In this area, generally, it is a case where the Legislature has let itself down and a straight challenge is posed to the conservative vision which suggests on the one hand that the institutions must be sustained at any price and on the other hand participate in the very lack of nerve of the institutions to act bravely in the case of necessary social legislation.

On the occasions when I spoke on this matter before I remember receiving different kinds of correspondence. I want to apologise to some of the people I did not reply to because my first reaction, as a young Senator, to some of the more extreme statements was to fire them into the dustbin. Lately I have been filing them because I consider them to be an important piece of social evidence of the state of mind of this country at this time. I can promise people who write to me as a result of anything I might say this evening a very speedy reply; one which may not please them but a reply at least.

It is necessary here to ask what was the tone of that correspondence? The tone of the correspondence suggests that the people who are proposing the legislation in the area of family planning in general were people who were anti-life and that the people who were beating-off such a proposal were people who were pro-life. The word that is common to such an assertion is the term "life" itself. Here it is important for us to be very specific. As legislators, when we use such a term are we speaking about life fully expressed, life biologically expressed, life in its social context? Are we simply taking biological life and expressing it as separate from social, political and cultural life? Are we speaking about life as it is lived now or as was lived in the past, or are we speaking about the potential that might be available to life given a change in the cultural, political and social circumstances which historical change may bring about?

No treatment of these questions was necessary because "life" was not being used in any general way by the proponents of the debate. There is the question, for example, about the immediate impact of the legislation within a particular family within a particular household, are you not asserting the potential of biological life in a balance against the social potential of all the other members of the family? We had not such debate because there was easy political capital in the phrase "life" itself. The pro-legislation people who are anti-life and the people who were speaking against were in favour of life. It was a great pity because it was necessary for us to have such a debate. Why was this omission made?

I believe that there is a great honesty in the genuine conservative approach which took life in any of its aspects and set it apart from a general consideration. Related to this, is a particular view or theory of the State and authority within the State, and the relationship of man's actions and man's political actions to general universal theory, theories of the universe, theories of the origin of the State and theories of the origin of authority. The Leader of this House, for example, believes that we should be influenced by the fact that we are a primarily 95 per cent Catholic State. He derives—and I hope I do no injustice to his argument—the authority of this institution, the Seanad, and the authority of the State in general from a higher authority which he believes, I would suggest, is divine.

My approach towards this question is to express a belief and a hope in rationality. The political philosophy upon which I operate comes from a period which is later in the history of political thought than that of the Leader of this House. I believe it is possible for people to rationally order their affairs. I believe it is possible for legislatures to offer and delicately balance competing interests within a State. I believe, too, that it is not only possible but that it is the obligation of legislatures to exercise their rationality in the defence of the rights of all individuals. There are points in that philosophy which immediately distinguishes it from a conservative philosophy. It is the distinction between even, for example, liberals and conservatives. But then, too, I am a socialist and I am aware of what is happening in the real world, the world of social and economic contradiction, which has delivered us an élite in society who participate in the benefits of society and a majority in society who do not participate in the advantages, material and non-material, in which we participate.

What then, must be the attitude of a socialist to this legislation? We take as our departure point the position of people who are deprived and people who are oppressed in a number of ways. Now, who suffers from the lack of legislation such as that proposed? One group of people who suffer are the women who bear children in our society. But they do not suffer equally. The women who bear large families in economic, social and cultural circumstances where their children will not be allowed to participate equally in in society suffer most. It is their need and their necessity—and here I use the word "necessity" in a dignified sense. It is the woman who knows that the child she produces will not be able to participate equally, culturally or economically in any way, materially or not materially—measure it whatever you wish—that is being told that she does not need this legislation.

In fact, the legislation is a confession of defeat to some extent, because if society was organised in a proper basis and was organised on the basis of human needs and on the basis genuinely of life, this would all be unnecessary. Surrounding every birth would be the immediate allocation of the resources of this world. Surrounding every birth, every child that was born, be it born in what is referred to, unfortunately, in this land as illegitimately or legitimately, would be the association of all the resources which are necessary for the development of that child's personality to its fullest possible extent. We know that the very conservatism which is invoking a God of some kind and which prevents this legislation is also invoked by those who justify the inequality in the distribution of social and economic cultural opportunity. It is the people who have perpetuated and benefited from the divisions withing society who are now saying to working class women: "You may not have legislation"—legislation is, at the end of the day, being used to protect woman against a society which is not structured towards satisfaction of human need but which is structured towards the production of commodities for profit.

Something has been said, too, in the correspondence which has been directed at those of us who are supporting this legislation. It has been said that we are opening the floodgates for a series of other acts which it is suggested would be detrimental in their effect on society in general. May I say this, and make a plea once again? I have said that there is the theory that the reason for having institutions of State and the reasons for participating in those institutions is a belief in the ability of mankind to rationally order its affairs. Part of that belief and rationality is expressed in the practice and order of science in society. In the communications which were sent to me, I addressed a rhetorical question. What evidence is there to suggest that legislation which clears up the law resulting from a court case is connected in any way with the proliferation of different social practices in other societies? There was no reply to this question, because in the same way as the term "life" could be used to whip up emotive support so too could any suggestion, however crazy, be made that once one had allowed this such and such would follow and then such and such would follow. There was, however, this interesting connection between the loose language: both were capable of whipping up fear and both were capable of abusing popularity.

We have on the other side of this debate in our society the women's organisations, the trade union movement, the annual conferences of the party of which I am a member. They have discussed the necessity of this legislation not in isolation but in two other contexts as well: legislation which would change the place and participation of woman generally in Irish society and also in the general context of necessary broad family reform. At all times they were not so influenced by any distortions of the world. They were influenced by their real experience, by the real evidence of households, the real evidence of want, the real evidence of scarcity and the real evidence of communications from constituents where there are Deputies or trade unionists from members of families who told them about what is meant when an additional member of the family arrived. The first instinct is to value that addition to the family, but then they realise that, in economic and social terms, it is one more mouth to be fed, one more person to be educated, one more person to put a strain on the entire household. That was the feeling, that was the evidence, and it was not unreal—it was very real— which the trade unionists when they discussed it in Congress brought to bear in their debate. It was that evidence, which the Labour Movement considered when addressing their attention to the position of underprivileged in society.

As a person who has lectured in the sociology of law, I say that the majority of the poor of the world are the victims of the law of the élite. That is a statement which I have often directed at the history of law-making in the western world. The possessive pronouns which find their way into the laws are not the possessive pronouns of the majority but the possessive pronouns of the minority. When Congress passed their motion it was not an emotive one; it was a careful motion which called for legislation in this area. When the Labour Party passed their motions it was after careful and responsible review.

I should like to sum up what I have said. There is an irrational quality to the allegations which have been made against this type of legislation every-time it was proposed. There was an exploitative quality to it in so far as it sought to exploit fear. It was unscientific in so far as it made wild propositions of connections between social incidents which were never connected. I should like to repeat that I believe it was an example of legislative cowardice not to have legislation in the past for these areas.

I now come to the most important part. It has been said that this legislation is almost the indication of a dark age of civilisation in the west. I remember a woman saying something like this to me. In a suitably solemn tone, having placed me firmly in the anti-life brigade and obviously without any possibility of redemption, she said this is not the thin edge of the wedge, this is the decadent society. Then, in so far as reflecting some values that her knowledge of the decadent world was extensive, she proceeded to attribute that to me also.

I should like to say something about what the opponents of this legislation believe about human beings. The opposition to this legislation is a complete removal of confidence from the average family in society. Let us be clear about what the law says, the law which the Tánaiste has said must be reformed and, in a generous invitation, asks all parties to co-operate in changing it. That law suggests that the State must protect the two people who are in wedlock from themselves. When you look at this law and where it came from, it has a theory of human nature in it, but it is a dismal and a hopeless view of human nature. On the other hand, when you attribute rationality to the social connection and when you accord rationality to the family in wedlock, it is a positive assignation; you are valuing that family positively; you are saying they are people who want to exercise their rights which affect them on their own terms.

What, then, is the related connection? In the first, where no confidence is allowed, can you imagine this world in which people need to be protected from themselves? Is that not a pessimistic view of the world? All this is offered on the basis of a benign—I wonder is He—deity. It certainly would not be a benign deity because the human creatures which He has placed are not to be trusted in their relationships with each other.

The State comes in then as a curious apparatus intervening between people's potential and the consequences of their actions. Such nonesense. If we remove obstacles from people's actions in regulating the affairs of their families and if we come down on the side of confidence, we will also be coming down on the side of love—a word which should be used carefully by people in public life, people in politics.

On the first occasion I spoke on this subject, I said I was influenced by some real examples. Sometimes I have seen people cope with economic want and with social want and with historical deprivation. I have often spoken on this. I am glad that Senator Owens spoke on this. Can anyone imagine what a woman must go through to carry a child before it is delivered into the world and in carrying that child looking at some of her existing children in want and knowing that that child is an additional increment to want? As someone who has been studying and teaching the social sciences for 15 years I should like to know can anybody reject the proposition that the ability of that woman to love is eroded by the child that is perhaps that much too much for the household, or the related proposition that if she could have decided whether to have a child or not that she would be allowed to look after a particular number of children, that her capacity to love would not be greater. Would not the real circumstances and the real opportunities to love be greater if the decision to exercise one's mind, given the economic, social and cultural resources, were available? Is not the most positive act of love to exercise responsibility and is not the denial of love to act irresponsibly or uncaringly? From the point of view of those people who would like to divide us, those people who are in favour of the legislation, are people who are cold and callous and immune to such feelings. We are not. It is in relation to this legislation that we need to keep these considerations in mind.

I should like to expand on another point. I said we are discussing this in the context of the position of women in Irish society. When one is deciding on this legislation one must have some practical limitation. There are only three women Senators. In the Irish social life there are more males participating than females. Thus it is that the atmosphere in which the debate goes on will inevitably reflect that distortion in society, a distortion to which the Commission on the Status of Women addressed themselves. There is not much we can do about that. We have to put ourselves into the position of the people who are affected by the lack of legislation. This will be difficult for many of us.

It is difficult, as I said, because there is an institutional imbalance through lack of participation of women. I want to say something about that in terms of Deputies and Senators who live in rural areas. I live in a city on the west coast. The other Senator who spoke in this debate in favour of this legislation, Senator Lyons, is chairman of the Western Health Board and that health board have a responsibility for the administration of health services in Galway and Mayo. There is a city in Galway but there is no large city in Mayo which is undergoing industrialisation.

Are we totally untypical in what we represent? I believe we are not. I do not believe that out there in the constituency there are people who are unfeeling, uncaring people who will stand in the way of legislation which will confer responsibility on the household unit. Too often the public have been insulted, badly judged. When a good case for a good piece of legislation is responsibly made to the public at large they can see its merits and very often they may be more generous in their response than some of the legislators who represent them, who seek policical advantage from the distortion of social and political fact rather than its clear presentation.

From the west of Ireland, then, Senator Michael Dalgan Lyons and I contributed to this debate, and one thing that clears up is the thought that this is in some way or another an urban piece of legislation and that rural Deputies and Senators might be afraid of it. That fear has been helped by well-organised lobbies in this country, the systematic, careful way in which names and addresses were selected, in which literature was toned up in a particular way, was deliberately and carefully well planned to magnify any worries or fears which the rural representatives might have.

Incidentally, let me say that, while the rules and rigours of science were not brought to bear on the arguments made against this legislation, again and again some of the more devious practices of science were brought to bear on the way that the literature was selectively distributed and arguments selectively constructed to exploit the fear of the rural representatives. Within rural Ireland, in Galway and Mayo, I meet men and women of different ages who show that there is support for a change in this law. When it is carefully explained it is like this: Mrs. McGee went to court and the court ruled and now the Legislature should act. Two reactions immediately occur: some great pity for Mrs. McGee and some contempt for a Legislature that was tardy.

It would be very useful this evening if there could be response to this debate in a generous way. Let us be perfectly clear in the assumptions that divide us in the second stage of my argument. I have said that those of us who are in favour of this legislation have confidence in the body politic, in its institution, a confidence in the family and a confidence in individuals rationally to order their affairs.

And not worried by medical doubts, either?

I shall be very glad to deal with that point when I come to it. What I find curious is that as a sociologist who has lectured occasionally to medical students and as a mathematical physicist, Senator Quinlan and I might differ. The relationship of the discipline which I both practise and teach in a university is far closer to medicine than that which Senator Quinlan practises There is this difference, however. I regularly make statements with absolute authority in the realm of medical affairs as a sociologist; Senator Quinlan frequently makes statements in the realm of medical affairs as a mathematical physicist. The public can judge the balance of those. I am delighted that Senator Quinlan helps me along like this because it reminds me to deal with some of his particular lobbies.

I was dealing with some of the assumptions which related to the second part of my argument. The second part characterises our confidence in the body politic, in the ability of institutions and individuals to order their affairs. Now we have come to this point of medical evidence. In the case of different strategies for family planning, what arises immediately should be dealt with by me in my treatment of this case. Can I assume that the people in this country lack sufficient intelligence to be unaware of the effects of particular practice which might have detrimental medical side-effects? The literacy rate in this country is very high. I am a supreme optimist. I have been, and will continue to be in the face of a considerable number of obstacles. I am optimistic about the intelligence of the Irish people in general. I do not think the taking of one practice and setting it off against another practice and saying that one is all right and the others are automatically damned on the invocation of selective evidence helps matters very much. It is a natural consequence of the approach I have had so far in my contribution to this debate that I would allow to the family, to the participants within the family, that intelligence which I am willing to allow to myself, that they would exercise their choices from a range of options which they understand.

There are some matters on which I hold extreme views. Unlike some Senators, I do not believe in the commercial distribution of drugs. I believe in national programmes for health and in a nationalised pharmaceutical industry. I believe in the complete and total control of distribution of medicines in society. But there is profit in sickness and there is profit in ignorance, so it is likely that we will have commercial firms distributing drugs for a long time because where there is profit and ignorance, combined with conservatism, it is very difficult to make progress.

What would be the ideal way to tell the public all of the possible bad effects which a drug might have? I suppose it would be when you had charge of the research which went into that drug, the procedure which went into its manufacture, the social circumstances which affected it. But what do you do? The very conservative vision which seeks to suggest that the people have not the intelligence to decide on the side-effects of the drug insist that these drugs be researched processed and distributed randomly and for profit.

The side-effects take a long time to show themselves. So did thalidamide. The side-effects of the other are only now surfacing. It was one which was guaranteed perfect.

I am aware of it.

The side-effects are only now surfacing.

I think that when I come to it Senator Quinlan will find that I have read some popular articles on genetics. However, I do not think that it is an exchange in our reading tastes that should concern Professor Quinlan and me. I am concerned about the side-effects of drugs. We are not winning an argument. I was speaking, before I was interrupted, about the circumstances in which it would be possible to protect every citizen against the side-effects or the direct effects or the indirect effects of drugs. It is made impossible because the profit motive is defended by the conservative vision, that same vision which insists on the right to profit, profit even in medicines, in drugs and, as I say, profit in sickness, profit in ignorance expressed in the production of, for example, literature. If I might use an anology in many cases, you frequently see it in the people who suggest that we must, above all else, defend the right of people to make profits from the publication of books and journals. We need to protect the people against pornography. It is the same kind of argument.

The Tánaiste, as a man of goodwill, has my confidence and is quite capable of taking charge of the health affairs of this country. Of course we would set about a programme of positive health. When we were speaking of the necessity to make and distribute drugs, I have said we should take charge of that ourselves, but we are not being allowed to do that by precisely the people who are now depriving families of the right to make up their minds. There are these illogicalities in it. Someone, later in this debate, might ask am I attacking conservatism generally. Yes, I am because I have not only confidence in individuals and in households but in the body politic in general to organise its affairs. To take up what has been said in the two or three interruptions I have got, and link it with something that I said at the very beginning——

I hope the Senator will answer them.

When Senator Quinlan was not present I explained the social circumstances which the addition of another member of a family might take from the capacity to love generally. There are those who would have no truck with love but would have truck with equations. It has been said that I am anti-life. I have replied to that. I have said that I am an optimist and believe in the capacity of the members of a family to organise their affairs. In relation to the precision of the terms and some of the things which I have to reply to, whenever I speak about life and say that this piece of legislation is necessary for a number of reasons, I am speaking about life in its fullest sense. Let us take, for the moment, the distinction between life as lived in the present and the potential life of a human being that might be brought about after the establishment of a socialist society here. A socialist situation, contrary to some distortions would not be such a dull affair: it is not all about economics, it is basically about freedom, it is about the right, the ability, the magnificent opportunity of expressing yourself fully and magnificently in cultural, social and economic affairs. All the opponents of socialism over the years have been seen to tag it as something narrowly economic. Of course it is nothing of the kind.

We should speak of life in its social sense, and here we come to the nut of the matter. A society which defends the unequal distribution of access to cultural, social and economic participation, which denies equality of access and sustains differential distribution induces the real result that you have the people with the greatest need, the greatest number of people with mouths to feed, possessing the least amount of resources. In the same breath it is said that it is defending life. I think that the time has now come for me to be a bit crude. Such people are defending the right to breed. That is what they are defending, not the right to life.

Is that how the Senator characterises all the fine large families in the country? That is his crude way of characterising them.

Of course it is not. The Senator is well aware that that is not what I said but, as is his usual practice in the literature he sends out on election to the Seanad, he will smile now at having created a miscomprehension because like many privileged people who operate in the university in which the Senator teaches, he abuses his position and does it regularly.

My university does not depend on the Senator's assessment of it.

The Senator should confine his remarks to Senator Quinlan in his public capacity and should not reflect on Senator Quinlan in his professional or private capacity.

With the greatest respect, I request the protection of the Chair from the attacks of Senator Quinlan which have been made often during my speech and have been so shallow as to question my ability, to call into question my ability to draw distinctions at all.

In what was referred to as a crude statement, I used the word in the sense of the normal use of the English lanquage. Many of the people who said they were defending the right right to life against those who were the anti-life brigade were really defending the right to breed. This is not an attack on large families. I happen to be married and to have a child born very early on in my marriage and my relationship with my wife is enhanced by the presence of my child, but I also know that my child is more fortunate than other children whose mothers and fathers have not the means that I have. My relationship with that child is affected—and I do not have to be a professional sociologist to say that— by my participation in education as in industry which enables me to earn a salary which makes it possible for my wife to spend more time than the average woman in Ireland with her child, which she does by choice. That is possible because of economic circumstances.

These economic circumstances are not general in our society. I am a participant in the inequality to which I have made reference earlier, but I realise in saying that that I have no right to enforce an abstract obligation on people with economic and social circumstances which are totally different from mine. Who am I privileged in society, who are we privileged in society, to impose obligations on people who are broken people within our economic system, the distressed people within our social order, the people whom we have deprived in every single way, the people who we insisted on housing in a different way?

We could not have workers' houses the same as other people's houses because they had to be workers' houses. There were many memoranda which made that point very clear. There were working class families and middle class families and upper class families and steady families. There are many categories of families. It has been the same vision which has been defending all of these inequalities that enabled all of these distinctions and all of these dangerous divisions in terms of social affairs, the same vision which is now standing in the way of this legislation. That is what I mean. It is the view of the person who distances himself from the real which opposes this legislation because the real is that the majority of the people badly want to express their love capacity, their emotions and their affections, but the Legislature has been a block, an obstacle to their actions and their decisions.

Debate adjourned.
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