text: Irish Episcopal power is illustrated in an example dredged from the Web "Noël Browne, the Health Minister, attempted to introduce a limited free health programme for children and pregnant women, the Mother and Child Scheme (1950s). This provoked outrage from the bishops and the church-run medical establishment. As Browne describes in his autobiography Against the Tide, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid “considered the health scheme an encroachment by the state on the church’s role, which he considered to be, among much else, ‘to determine and to control the social attitudes of the family in the Republic, especially in the delicate matters of maternity and sexuality’.” Within months the church crushed the scheme and Browne was hounded out of the government. Labour Party leader William Norton scandalously sided with the church against Noël Browne and the Mother and Child Scheme. The Irish Trades Union Congress initially supported the Scheme but retreated once the bishops denounced it."