The numbers buying the Morning After Pill (MAP) have increased significantly since it became available over the counter for the first time a month ago, it has been reported.

The managing director of over 70 Unicare and Doc-Morris pharmacies, Cormac Tobin, told the Irish Daily Mail said that, in his pharmacies, demand for the MAP had soared.

“Where in previous months we would have been selling 30 units of the the pill every 30 days, we are now selling 300,” Mr Tobin said.

The news has led to fears of a rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the Irish College of General Practicioners has condemned the “over advertising” of the MAP.

Professor David Paton, an economist at the University of Nottingham and an expert in the impact of campaigns which promote contraception, warned that the increase in the use of the MAP might give rise to more STIs.

Speaking on behalf of the Iona Institute, he said that there an increase in the rates of STIs was “a very real danger”.

Professor Paton, who has conducted a series of studies on New Labour initiatives in the UK tackling teenage pregnancy, also attacked suggestions that increased use of the pill would lead to lower rates of teen pregnancy.

“Every piece of research on this subject to date has found no evidence that easier access to to emergency contraception leads to lower rates of unwanted pregnancies,” he said.

“There is an element to this, and everyone thinks this way, that behaviour may change where people may now take more risks.”

Professor Paton wrote a submission to the Law Reform Commission in response to their document suggesting that teenagers under the age of 16 ought to be able to access contraception without parental consent.

He said that the UK rates of teenage pregnancy were up to six times higher than those in England and Wales, and that Irish policy makers should think long and hard before copying British policy in this area.

Meanwhile, the chair of the Irish College of General Practicioners, Mel Bates, told the Irish Daily Mail that the publicity surroung the MAP had “gone a long way to increasing its demand”.

He said he was not convinced that the reason for the rise was purely down to an already existant demand.