Tributes paid after death of Mary McGee, who helped end Ireland’s ban on contraception

May Mcgee in the Floraville Gardens at Skerries with a statue in her honour, 50 years on from the overturning of the ban on contraception. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times

Tributes have poured in from across Ireland after the death of Mary McGee, a woman credited with sparking a “social revolution” that paved the way for the legalisation of contraceptives in the country.

McGee, who went by the name May, and her husband, Seamus, hit the headlines in 1972 after the couple lodged a landmark legal challenge against a decades-old law that banned the sale or import of contraceptives in Ireland.