The Mother and Child Scheme was a healthcare programme in Ireland that would later become remembered as a major political crisis involving primarily the Irish Government and Roman Catholic Church in the early 1950s.
No significant reform of healthcare occurred in this time and the Catholic Church still retained effective control through the ownership of hospitals and schools, while family doctors still largely practised in isolation of other medical professionals.
Regarding healthcare, international trends such as in the National Health Service of the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe were noticed by the Irish political system.
Browne was an admirer of Fianna Fáil's 1947 Health Act[4] and intended to implement its provisions as part of a plan to reduce the alarmingly high rate of child mortality (especially from tuberculosis) in Ireland,[5][6][7] modernise the Irish healthcare system and make it free and without means-testing for mothers and their children up to the age of 16.
[4] He was impressed with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom[8] and successful medical procedural reforms in Denmark which reduced child mortality.
More important was the opposition of the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who summoned Browne to his palace[8] and read out a letter to be sent to the Taoiseach, John A. Costello, penned by Dr. James Staunton, Bishop of Ferns, which included the words "...they [the Archbishops and bishops] feel bound by their office to consider whether the proposals are in accordance with Catholic moral teaching," and, "Doctors trained in institutions in which we have no confidence may be appointed as medical officers ... and may give gynaecological care not in accordance with Catholic principles".
He exercised considerable influence concerning medical appointments and control over the religious orders whose members made up much of the administrative and management staff in hospitals, sanatoria etc.
[14][15] Concerning the term "moral teaching" in the letter to the Taoiseach, Browne received supportive advice – in secret – from Francis Cremin, a Maynooth professor of theology and canon law.
In his resignation statement, Browne told the House: I had been led to believe that my insistence on the exclusion of a means test had the full support of my colleagues in the Government.
[20]During the subsequent Dáil debate on the resignation, Tánaiste and Labour Party leader William Norton claimed: ...if this matter had been handled with tact, with understanding and with forbearance by the Minister responsible, I believe we would not have had the situation which has been brought about to-day.
Although a single-payer system emerged in Ireland, the 1957 Act ended immediate attempts to implement a National Health Service-style healthcare model.