The Irish Family Planning Association said yesterday it would welcome the removal of "legal ambiguities" in relation to the morning-after pill.
The IFPA chief executive, Mr Tony O'Brien, said reports that the Cabinet sub-committee was going to recommend licensing of emergency contraceptives were positive.
However, the association did not necessarily accept there was ambiguity concerning the morning-after pill.
"But in so far as the Irish Medicines Board believed there was, we welcome the fact that it seems the Government plans to remove that ambiguity," he said.
He also said he was glad the Cabinet sub-committee on abortion "has been discussing something other than a referendum on abortion". Mr O'Brien said to make progress on the abortion issue, the debate would have to be grounded on the issues of crisis pregnancy "rather than endless constitutional debate".
Last year, the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) said it had advised the manufacturers of a morning-after pill, Levonelle-2, that its understanding was the drug was an abortifacient. The Family Planning Act 1979 specifically prohibits the importation, sale, and distribution of abortifacients.
The drug was licensed in 13 EU states under contraception regulations rather than abortion. The company withdrew its application.
The IMB has referred the matter to a senior counsel and he is expected to report back next month. The drug is on sale over the counter in British pharmacies.
The morning-after pill is not licensed for sale here. At present, women seeking emergency post-coital contraception are prescribed Ovram, a strong oestrogen-based contraceptive, taken as a daily contraception by some women, which is not licensed as a morning-after pill.
At the hearings on abortion of the All-party Oireachtas committee last year, the president of the Medical Council, Prof Gerard Bury, was asked if a doctor who prescribed the morning-after pill would be acting unethically.
"It currently is a part of normal practice that hasn't been challenged, or, in fact, even addressed within the ethical guidelines," he said.
"In as much as the morning-after pill is available and prescribed, the legal presumption must be that it is not regarded as an abortifacient," said the committee's report.