July 17 1974
The Irish Government’s Bill to legalise contraception in the Republic was thrown out last night.
Deputies in the Dáil voted 75 to 61 against a second reading of the Contraceptives Bill.
A packed public gallery saw the Taoiseach, Mr Liam Cosgrave, vote against the Bill introduced by Justice Minister Mr Patrick Cooney.
The Bill, which followed the Supreme Court’s ruling last December that it was legal to import contraceptives for use, aimed to permit their sale to married couples only when bought through a specially licensed shop. The Bill did not aim to permit their sale to single people.
It came under attack from two sides – from Deputies who were ardently opposed to any reform of the existing legislation, and those who favoured a change but saw the Bill as impracticable.
After the Bill was defeated, Opposition leader, Mr Jack Lynch, whose party Fianna Fáil voted en bloc against the Bill, told the Dáil: “It is pretty serious when a head of the government votes against the Bill”.
Unsurprisingly, the Irish government’s Contraceptives Bill failed to pass after its leader Liam Cosgrave voted against it.
‘Lack of guts’ by Rees
In one of his bitterest attacks on internment, Mr Paddy Devlin, the SDLP’s former Minister of Health, said last night that imprisonment without trial would last until the Secretary of State Mr Merlyn Rees “displays the guts of a man and stands up to a military general on a political issue”.
He described as “dishonourable” Mr Rees’s present behaviour on internment. “He and the Labour Party, while in Opposition, constantly condemned the use and abuses of internment as an instrument of law and order in the north,” said Mr Devlin.
“Now that he has the power and the opportunity of ending it, without extending any political advantage to the Conservatives, he refuses to face up to his moral obligation to do so.”
Mr Devlin also dismissed as “contemptible” Mr Rees’s proposals to let seven detainees out each week, having regard to the assurances given by his predecessors in government to the SDLP, when a power-sharing executive was formed to phase out internment by July 1974.
