In 1979 the Health (Family Planning) Bill was introduced by Charles Haughey. This bill limited the provision of contraceptives to bona fide "family planning or for adequate medical reasons". A controversial part of the bill was that contraceptives could only be dispensed by a pharmacist on the presentation of a valid medical prescription from a practising doctor. It is often wrongly stated that the recipient of the prescription had to be married, but the legislation did not technically require such terms, however "bona fide family planning" would have made non-marital use unlikely to be authorised. The reason for this compromise was the strong position of conservative elements in Irish society at the time, particularly the Roman Catholic Church which made it difficult for the government to provide for a more liberal law. Contraception was also not seen by politicians as a vote-getter at the time. Haughey famously described the 1979 Act as "an Irish solution to an Irish problem". On 1 November 1980 the Act came into operation by order of the Minister.