Face the facts: sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by sex
Heaney appeared on RTÉ1's This Week to comment on recent surveys of young people in the Cork area which suggest 'high levels of ignorance' and a 'willingness to engage in unprotected intercourse'.
Her response was to blame the Government (doesn't everybody, these days?) for not taking responsibility. Asked, helpfully, by RTÉ's Gerald Barry for 'three simple things' which the Government should now do, she rhymed off a little list a sexual health strategy, programmes to educate young people about sexuality, and free contraception.
No doubt the Irish Family Planning Association can provide all these things if the State wants them.
But if Catherine Heaney's vision is the most we can offer the nation's young people, we should be very afraid for their sexual and emotional health.
The very solutions the IFPA has to offer are the ones which are failing, radically, in Britain and elsewhere.
Britain has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy despite having the world's second-highest rate of contraceptive usage.
In Britain, 80% of women aged 15-44 use contraception, yet the rate of British teenagers aged 15-19 giving birth was over three times that of France and seven times that of Japan.
Sexually transmitted diseases have been on the increase since 1995, with the most substantial increases occurring among teenagers and homosexual men.
New infections were highest among females aged between 16 and 19, followed by males aged 20 to 24.
Last week the House of Commons Health Committee delivered its verdict.
"England is currently witnessing a rapid decline in its sexual health," it said.
The report noted that STD clinics are turning away hundreds of potentially infective patients each week because they cannot cope with demand.
This is happening despite the collapse of taboos about sex, the wide availability of condoms and an emphasis on safe sex by family planning organisations.
Maybe it's now time to ask if these organisations are, in fact, contributing to sexual health problems in the western world.
Uganda provides a clue. This East African country once had the highest rate of HIV in the world. Now it has the AIDS virus on the run.
In the early 1990s, 30% of the population was infected. Now it's only 10%.
The Ugandans achieved this by abandoning the approach of the United Nations and other African countries which puts condom use at the centre of the fight against AIDS.
Instead, they chose to believe that people could, in fact, change their sexual behaviour.
After coming to power in 1986 President Museveni adopted what is called the 'ABC' strategy Abstain, Be faithful and, if A and B fail, use Condoms. Note the order.
The results have been dramatic. The proportion of sexually active youth declined markedly from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, and the greatest decline in HIV infections occurred in the 15-19 year-old age group.
Ugandan adults are now less promiscuous. In 2001 the percentage of women aged 15 years and older reporting multiple sexual partners was only 2.5%. Back in 1989 it was 18.4%.
Last year, a Harvard University study credited abstinence education with "significant effectiveness in reducing AIDS in Uganda", and recorded a dramatic fall in the number of pregnant Ugandan women testing positive for HIV.
At the peak of the epidemic the figure was 21%. In 2001, it was 6%.
Although Britain has nothing like African AIDS rates, new diagnoses increased by nearly 12% a year since 1997, and by about 32% from 2001 to 2002.
This is not surprising. The British have been engaging in their own kind of behavioural change.
Since 1990, the average age of first intercourse has gone down from 17 to 16; the percentage of men having homosexual sex went up from 3.6% to 5.4%; the average number of sexual partners in a lifetime nearly doubled for men (12.7) and women (6.5).
Coping with the public health problems generated by changing sexual behaviour is expensive.
With new anti-retroviral drugs an increasing number of AIDS patients can survive. But they need treatment which can cost up to 21,000 per person per year.
Ireland is not immune. Dr Derek Freedman of St James's Hospital says a couple of hundred people a day are now coming for treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
And he says the clinics need guess what? more funds and resources.
It makes you realise how badly we are being served by public health organisations which have lost faith in people's ability to control their sexual behaviour.
One IFPA booklet for boys(sponsored by the North Eastern Health Board) features a large section on condom usage, but there is not one mention of the fact that condoms do not offer 100% protection against infection.
How responsible is that? Needless to say, there is no mention of abstinence.
Presumably they associate abstinence campaigns with right-wing conservatives.
But it wasn't George W Bush who wrote in 1997 that "we need to do everything in our power to discourage sexual activity among teenagers and encourage abstinence".
It was Hillary Clinton.
Survey after survey shows that abstinence campaigns actually work.
While, on the other hand, a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet suggests that increased condom use may increase the number of (HIV/AIDS) transmission.
"A vigorous condom promotion policy could increase rather than decrease unprotected sexual exposure if it has the unintended effect of encouraging a greater overall level of sexual activity," it says.
It's not just about physical health either. "No one's invented a contraceptive against getting hurt," says a leaflet published by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
And recent Scottish research shows that 45% of girls and 32% of boys regretted initiating sexual activity as early as they did.
Ironically, Ireland has regressed in its treatment of sexual health issues. A decade ago, health promotion advertising emphasised abstinence or fidelity as the best protection against disease.
But, encouraged by the IFPA and others, the Department of Health took a leap back into the 1960s back to flower power and free love.
We are left with sexual health policy that promotes condoms and ignores abstinence. because it's not politically correct to discourage irresponsible sexual behaviour.
It's a bit like having an ad campaign which says 'If you're smoking 40 a day, use a filter'. Or 'If you're going to get blind drunk tonight, leave the car keys at home'.
But don't blame the Government. Politicians and civil servants will embrace whatever slick and sophisticated package is on offer. It just happens that the wrong groups are behind the packages.
They are people with an ideological commitment to getting rid of people's hang-ups about sexuality. Which is all very fine as long as our health isn't compromised in the process.
People with a better solution need to wake up and develop campaigns which genuinely care for young people, by emphasising abstinence and self-control as the primary element of a sexual health programme.
Eventually these campaigns will get funding. Because they are the only ones that work.
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