How a Government Policy Can Have a Positive Impact on Women's Choice of Contraception: A Study of Irish Pharmacy Sales Data Between the Years 2021-2024

OBJECTIVES: Cost has been shown to be a barrier to accessing preferred methods of female contraception in the Irish market. In September 2022, the Irish government launched a programme to remove this barrier by providing contraception free of charge to women. This research aims to examine the impact of this scheme by looking at the overall use of contraception and the choice of method.

METHODS: Community pharmacy sales data collected between 2021 and 2024 in the Republic of Ireland was used. The overall contraceptive market as well as usage of different types of contraception before and after the implementation of the free contraceptive scheme was examined.

RESULTS: In the first-year post-scheme implementation, the data collected showed a general increase of 1.6% on the total contraception market, 0.2% growth within the oral contraceptives (combined tablets and progesterone-only tablets) and a 14.6% growth in the use of other contraceptive types (intrauterine device (IUD), vaginal ring, transdermal patch, intradermal implant, and injection). When adjusted for population changes, by estimates from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) projection, this resulted in a 0.1% decrease in use of oral contraceptives and a 1.2% increase in use of non-oral methods.

CONCLUSIONS: The resulting data demonstrates that with the implementation of the new governmental policy, women generally opted for their preferred contraception. This can be seen with the decrease in oral contraceptive medications and the resulting increase in use of other more expensive long-term treatments. These results suggests that women are more empowered to choose their preferred contraceptive methods when the barrier of cost is removed, giving merit to further research in women’s reproductive autonomy.