In 1169, Anglo-Norman forces from South Wales landed on the south coast of Ireland. With the backing of King Henry II of England, they went on to take military control of the bilingual Norse-Irish city-kingdoms of Dublin, Waterford and Wexford. In 1170, the High King of All Ireland led an Irish counteroffensive against the Normans, but in 1171 King Henry landed an army in Ireland to establish English control. Settlers from England began to move into the Norman-occupied areas, and as more and more of them arrived, much of the eastern and southeastern coastal areas of Ireland gradually became English-speaking, under an Anglo-Norman-speaking aristocracy.

The chapter describes the main nature conservation challenges in Ireland, its main policy responses and actions, and their achievements and lessons, primarily over the last 40 years. This covers the country’s natural characteristics, habitats and species of particular importance; the status of nature and main pressures affecting it; nature conservation policies (including biodiversity strategies), legislation, governance and key actors; species measures; protected areas and networks; general conservation measures (e.g. development planning, species-rich grasslands and agri-environment schemes, and peatland management and restoration); nature conservation costs, economic benefits and funding sources; and biodiversity monitoring. Likely future developments are also identified. Conclusions are drawn on what measures have been most effective and why, and what is needed to improve the implementation of existing measures and achieve future nature conservation goals.

Nationalist ideas on the economy went global in the late nineteenth century, affecting policy in Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ireland, India, Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Japan. In general, policy makers considered closing the gap with Great Britain to be of paramount importance. This aided the spread of Listian ideas. However, these ideas were transformed by local conditions in the countries they impacted. Developmental approaches worked better if they could be tethered to indigenous ideas, as was the case in Japan. In Germany, Listian was transformed into an aggressive ideology of territorial expansion and national struggle. In colonial India and Ireland, opposition to British rule and the necessity of public mobilisation meant that industrialist ideas were supplemented with agrarian interests. In multi-ethnic locations, such as the Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, isolationist approaches came to the fore as nationalists looked to build ethnically homogenous economies separate from those of other nationalities.

The attitudes and legislative initiatives of the Irish government in the 1920s and 1930s cast a long shadow over the rest of the twentieth century. Lack of access to contraception combined with the power of Catholic teaching meant that there was considerable fear around pre-marital sex, which also influenced how sex education was disseminated in the period with a focus on morality rather than physiology. In the absence of formal sex education, young men and women were provided with moral codes regarding sexual activity, which were in turn policed by families and communities. This chapter shows how attitudes to sex in the period were clouded in a culture of fear which was perpetuated by Catholic Church teachings. Yet, at the same time, women’s magazines and television programmes such as The Late Late Show attempted to push against these boundaries through more open discussion of matters relating to sex and family planning.

This chapter shows that following the introduction of the Family Planning Act, very little changed in relation to access to contraception. Individuals were still reliant on a sympathetic doctor and a chemist that would stock contraceptives. Moreover, into the 1980s and 1990s, class, location, and age had a significant impact on access. As the case of tubal ligation shows, the UK continued to be relied upon for Irish women’s reproductive healthcare. This chapter argues that direct challenges to the law by activists such as Condom Sense and the IFPA youth group highlighted the problems with the law and ultimately helped to act as a catalyst for its liberalisation in 1993.

From the late 1960s to late 1970s, a number of family planning clinics were established across the country. This chapter explores the experiences of activists involved in these clinics, the personal risks they took and their motivations for involvement. The importance of national and international networks is explored. The demand for the clinics across the country shows that many Irish men and women were beginning to exercise their own agency in relation to their reproductive choices. The stories of these family planning clinics, also show the importance of medical authority and how the medical model was seen to legitimise the work they were doing, but also enabled the clinics to provide a wider range of family planning options. While the groups ultimately did not succeed in broadening contraceptive access to a wide range of socioeconomic classes, they played a significant role in the liberalisation of family planning law in 1970s Ireland and opening up debates on the issue.

This chapter explores the role of anti-contraception groups in the campaign against the legalisation of contraception in 1970s Ireland and the widening of access to contraception in the 1980s. Through the use of oral histories, archival material, newspapers and the publications of conservative groups, this chapter reveals campaigners’ concerns about the modernisation of the country and legislative change. Activists’ rhetoric drew on a complex web of arguments which incorporated scientific evidence (such as the potential health risks of the pill) and sociological and statistical evidence in relation to the impact of ‘the permissive society’ in other contexts. It is also crucial to place Irish groups within the wider international context. The chapter also shows how international networks, particularly links with conservative groups in the United States and the United Kingdom, assisted activists in developing their campaigns but also provided ideas which helped to set the foundation for the anti-abortion campaign in Ireland in the 1980s.

The conclusion sums up the key findings of the book as well as its contemporary relevance. It also points to avenues for future research.

This chapter highlights the profound influence of the legal and religious context on individuals’ choices around family planning in the early twentieth century. Individuals’ accounts suggest that their parents lacked knowledge of contraception and complied with Church teachings. Yet, the documentation of court cases relating to contraception in the Irish press, and letters from Irish men and women to Marie Stopes complicates this picture and suggests a tension between what oral history respondents think about their parents’ reproductive health experiences and the lived realities of men and women of fertile age in early post-independent Ireland. This chapter provides clear evidence of resistance and attempts at resistance. In addition, the letters from Irish men and women to Marie Stopes suggest that many Irish men and women perceived a lack of access to birth control as having a negative impact on both maternal and infant health.

This chapter builds on important recent accounts of the contraceptive pill in other predominantly Catholic countries with similar restrictions in place. It focuses on three key themes: firstly, contemporary attitudes to the contraceptive pill in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s; the experiences of Irish women who chose to take the contraceptive pill; and, the role of medical authority surrounding the pill. The chapter shows that through negotiating access to the contraceptive pill, Irish women were also negotiating both their marriage dynamics and relationships with the medical profession. Ultimately, the loophole regarding the prescription of the contraceptive pill as a cycle regulator in the period before 1979 placed Irish general practitioners in a position of significant power over women’s access to contraception.

The introduction provides a broad overview of the history of contraception and sexuality in Ireland from the formation of the Irish Free State while situating the book’s key arguments within the wider international historiography and outlining the social, religious and cultural context. A detailed explanation of the methodology and the value of utilising first-hand accounts and oral history interviews in order to uncover the history of contraception in Ireland is also provided.

By the 1970s, younger generations of Irish men and women were beginning to question the Church’s teachings in relation to contraception, and many others were exhibiting resistance in their contraceptive practices. It is evident, however, that for the older generations, Church teachings had a significant impact on their family planning choices, often resulting in guilt and shame if individuals chose to use contraception. Although it is clear that the encyclical Humanae Vitae caused considerable anguish for some members of the priesthood, speaking out against papal teachings could have significant consequences. Many priests toed the line and the confession box was an important sphere where priests could continue to exert power over women’s family planning choices. Yet, it is clear that some priests were also beginning to follow their own consciences, and used the confession box compassionately to assist individuals who were troubled by their decision to use contraception.

This chapter highlights how, in the absence of legal access to artificial methods, natural methods of family planning, in particular calendar-based methods remained popular, particularly for couples who were born in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition, for many couples, having children was an accepted part of marriage; contraceptive methods only tended to be used after participants had already had children in order to ‘space’ subsequent pregnancies, or in order to ‘stop’ pregnancies following the completion of the family. In contrast to Ireland, visions of England as a ‘permissive’ society persisted well into the twentieth century. The chapter also seeks to explore the dynamics of decision-making around family planning in the period, illustrating how women began to exhibit more agency around these choices, and that contraception was generally seen as a female responsibility. It will also illuminate the impact that lack of access to artificial contraception had on individuals.

This chapter explores the contraception campaigns of feminist groups in the 1970s including the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, Irishwomen United and the Contraception Action Programme. It places the activities of these groups within the wider historiography of feminist health activism. Drawing primarily on oral history interviews with former members and feminist magazines, newspaper sources and the Roisin Conroy/Attic Press Archive, this chapter illuminates the personal experiences of Irish feminist activists. It illuminates the personal experiences of Irish feminist activists and illustrate the nuances of feminist demands for reproductive rights within the Irish case study. Moreover, as well as service provision, later groups such as IWU and CAP drew attention to the important class and geographic inequalities with regard to access to contraception in Ireland.

The constitutional lawyer and public intellectual Albert Venn Dicey remains a touchstone for scholars in constitutional/public law, who return to his classic definitions of the rule of law and of parliamentary sovereignty. Likewise, British and Irish historians have kept him in view, assessing his role in the conflict over Home Rule that dominated the politics of the period. Nevertheless, Dicey has been overlooked as a political theorist. This oversight impairs our understanding of the development of liberal and democratic thought, and deprives us of valuable insights at a time when the compatibility of democracy and liberalism has again been put in question both within academia and in broader public discourse. Specifically, it has been too little noted that Dicey was the earliest Anglophone thinker to put advocacy of the referendum at the heart of a sophisticated theory of democracy. He diagnosed modern Western parliamentary regimes as suffering from a crisis of representation, which he wished to remedy by implementing a specific form of constitutional referendum. This chapter is one of Dicey’s major explorations of the referendum and the trajectory of democracy.

The constitutional lawyer and public intellectual Albert Venn Dicey remains a touchstone for scholars in constitutional/public law, who return to his classic definitions of the rule of law and of parliamentary sovereignty. Likewise, British and Irish historians have kept him in view, assessing his role in the conflict over Home Rule that dominated the politics of the period. Nevertheless, Dicey has been overlooked as a political theorist. This oversight impairs our understanding of the development of liberal and democratic thought, and deprives us of valuable insights at a time when the compatibility of democracy and liberalism has again been put in question both within academia and in broader public discourse. Specifically, it has been too little noted that Dicey was the earliest Anglophone thinker to put advocacy of the referendum at the heart of a sophisticated theory of democracy. He diagnosed modern Western parliamentary regimes as suffering from a crisis of representation, which he wished to remedy by implementing a specific form of constitutional referendum. This chapter is one of Dicey’s major explorations of the referendum and the trajectory of democracy.