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.