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History of the HAI

A Humanist group was originally formed in Ireland in 1967. Public lectures and discussions were held as well as joint meetings with the Northern Ireland Humanist group. The Association attracted members and sympathisers such as Hubert Butler, Kevin Healy, Justin Keating, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Owen Sheehy Skeffington, Jim Loughran and the late Bill Hyland. The ten years of its existence were lively ones but its energies were eventually diverted into the campaign for birth control in the Republic. Dr Jim Loughran became the first Chairman of the Irish Family Planning Association, as did Kevin Healy subsequently. Dr Jim Loughran went on to be the moving force behind the McGee case which resulted in the judgement which began the process of liberalisation of the contraception ban. Bill Hyland, with his wife Aine, became the main motivator behind the Multi-Denominational school movement. With increasing liberalisation came the re-founding of a Humanist group in 1993 under the Presidency of the writer Dick Spicer, who had been a founder member of the Campaign to Separate Church & State in the mid-eighties.The Association now has several hundred members, plays an active role in promoting the open society and articulates the atheist perspective of the non-religious community.