I was broke. Well, perhaps not totally broke – it was more of a cash-flow crisis. Bills had come in, but cheques had not and the recession was starting to pinch in the Sexton household. I needed all the spare cash I could lay my hands on for my holiday; unfortunately I also needed the pill.

I don’t know about you lot, but it grates with me, having to pay sixty quid to the doctor to get my contraception. You don’t need a degree to ask someone how she is feeling and to check her blood pressure. My doctor is reasonably understanding about this, and he will renew my six months prescription once without seeing me; and I’m canny enough to ask for a new one if ever I pop in to see him for anything else. But in the last year or so I’ve been as healthy as a prize-winning horse. This meant an appointment was due, and as my funds were earmarked for other purposes I was loath to pay for it.
The thought crossed my mind – fug it, I’ve got condoms. After all, I always use them anyway. Condoms, when used correctly, prevent pregnancy about 98 percent of the time. Used incorrectly, or sporadically, and condom failure rate jumps to between ten and fifteen percent.
Luckily, a more sensible realisation prevailed – I was going to be on holiday, during which I would be off at a four-day festival in the bush. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that a festival, camping and alcohol wasn’t exactly the ideal situation for my Pleasuremax to be performing at their peak. So, the pill it was…
If you are not a student, the cheapest way to get the pill – at least as far as I could ascertain, and I spent ages looking – is to visit your local Irish Family Planning Association clinic. The IFPA charges €47 for a consultation and the pill itself is available at a reduced cost – depending on what you are taking, it can be as little as €5 per packet. This is cheaper than the doctor, but not by a whole lot. Which led me to wondering just how much the relatively high cost of contraception affects the number of crisis pregnancies in Ireland each year.
The Crisis Pregnancy Agency thinks it is a problem. In 2006 the CPA commissioned research on the issue, and found that cost was a significant barrier to consistent use of contraception, particularly for people on low incomes or with low levels of education. If you are entitled to a medical card, you can visit your IFPA clinic free of charge. However, many people on low incomes fall into a nebulous area where they don’t have the money to pay for the doctor, but not poor enough to qualify for a medical card.
The CPA findings are not remarkable. The 2006 The Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships found that one in five people aged between 18-24 said that the cost of condoms discouraged them from using protection. Last year the government dropped the VAT rate on condoms from 21% to 13.5%, but while this is a step in the right direction, it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to the price paid at the tills.
For students, the availability of sexual health services and free contraception depends on where the CAO places them, in essence because the health services available to students depend on the college’s resources, not on government funding. Some campuses, such as the University of Limerick, offer free consultations, and condoms and glyde dams are available at the welfare office. This academic year, in an effort to save money, University College Dublin has introduced fees for health services – €25 to see the doctor and €10 for the nurse.
I spoke to Ciaran Fitzpatrick of the Union of Students in Ireland. While the USI is committed to lobbying the government for funding to make standardised health services and contraception available for students, Fitzpatrick accepts that the union is unlikely to win the argument, given impact of the recession.
According to USI, some colleges offer no sexual health services at all. A student in Athlone needing STI screening has to make an appointment in Balinasloe, and wait an astonishing three months for testing. Other colleges offer STI screenings one day a week at special clinics, but because everyone knows that this is an STI clinic, many students are fearful that their peers will see them using these services.
Most student unions promote safe sex and hand out free condoms during RAG and National Condom Week. This is important, because surveys show that many young people are still frighteningly ignorant about pregnancy and STIs, but students have sex all year round.
Indeed, given the level of ignorance, it may be that free consultations and free access to contraception and condoms for anyone who wants them is the only way to go.
The government may carp that the funding isn’t there to provide this, but frankly that’s just not good enough. Crisis pregnancy is huge problem in Ireland. The CPA has done sterling work since it’s inception in 2001, and the number of teens giving birth has dropped by 21 percent and the number of Irish women travelling to the UK for an abortion has decreased by a third.
However, 28 percent of Irish women and 23 percent of men will still experience a crisis pregnancy. The average age for a crisis pregnancy is about 23 or 24 years old – it is those starting out in their careers and who are therefore unlikely to have much disposable income, who are most affected.
Around 15 percent of women who experience a crisis pregnancy choose to have an abortion. For a country where abortion is illegal and regarded by many as a ‘sin’ the government should be doing more to prevent the need for abortions in the first place. I can’t help but suspect that the powers-that-be are willing to look the other way because it doesn’t cost us a penny to fob the problem off on our more liberal European neighbours.
If cost is the issue, the government might like to consider the fact that provisional figures from the Department of Social and Family Affairs show that over €1 billion euro in payments was made to single-parent families in 2008 – more than 50 percent more that was paid out in 1999. Single parents need, and deserve, financial assistance, but I am astounded that the Department has not done a cost-benefit analysis to see how access to free or even heavily subsidized contraception would help to reduce their costs.
Of course there is a level of personal responsibility involved, and so it doesn’t make sense simply to blame the state for the high number of crisis pregnancies in the country. Anybody in a relationship and having regular sex, but not planning a family, would be mad not to use some kind of contraception.
However, the sex lives of many people, particularly young people, tend to be casual. A young woman of limited means who may only have sex every few weeks is unlikely to think that shelling out €47 to see the IFPA is money well spent – if her consultation and contraception were free, however, she’d be more likely to avail of these services. Any young man, who manages to ‘score’ infrequently, is unlikely to turn down a sexual opportunity when it presents itself – even if he doesn’t have a condom. It might not be very smart, but that’s the reality. If he could get free condoms, chances are he would always have one in his wallet.
Free sex makes economic sense. Now there’s a slogan for an ambitious political party come general election time!