WHEN gardai raided the premises three weeks ago where an abortion was alleged to have been carried out in 1995, they found it now housed the Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices clinic.
A week later the story broke in The Irish Times. The spokesman who came forward for the clinic was a slight middle aged man, Frank Crummey.
Soft spoken and a little hesitant, he seemed an unlikely figure to be fronting an organisation linked to one of the best known family planning organisations in the world.
Although constitutionally and financially independent, the MSRC clinic in Dublin is linked to the Marie Stopes clinics in Britain. They draw their inspiration from a family planning pioneer, Marie Stopes, who caused a huge scandal in Victorian Britain with her books Married Love.
Frank Crummey's appearance and family background suggest he would be more at home in one of the anti abortion organisations than in a movement closely associated with campaigning worldwide for abortion rights.
He is happily married, with five children and three grandchildren "and one on the way". Grey haired and a little stooped, he usually wears a jumper under a rather crumpled suit.
However, although he has been out of the limelight for almost two decades, Frank Crummey is no stranger to family planning controversy.
He was a founder member of the Irish Family Planning Association, though his involvement with it was short lived. In the early 1970s as he set up Family Planning Services Ltd, importing family planning booklets and devices.
During this time he became friendly with the doctor at the centre of the current controversy. It is alleged that an abortion was carried out on the premises before it was occupied by MSRC.
Mr Crummey started working life as a postal sorter. In 1972 he joined the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as a social worker.
In June 1975 he was dismissed. He was told his involvement with family planning was, inconsistent with being a social worker, and offered the opportunity to resign from IFPS, which he declined.
"I was unemployed for a long time after that," he recalls, doing "anything to earn a shilling. I remember collecting mineral bottles to buy the dinner."
His work included private investigations. At this stage his" five children were aged between, five and 15.
In 1976 he, along with his wife, Evelyn, and Family Planning Court services sought a High Court order that the Censorship of Publications Board and the Chief State Solicitor, on behalf of the Attorney General, explain why they were banning the publication and sale of the booklet, Family Planning.
He argued that he and his wife who, due to their precarious financial situation could not afford to have any more children, were being denied their constitutional right to family planning.
The right to import contraceptives had already been established in the McGee case, and he argued that this right was not of much use without the necessary information on how to use them.
His financial and employment difficulties removed Frank Crummey from active involvement in the family planning movement.
Many family planning campaigners reunited in opposition to the 1983 referendum on abortion, but he was not involved. Nor was he involved in the 1992 abortion referendum campaign.
For the past 11 years Mr Crummey has been working as a legal executive in a firm of solicitors, specialising in family law. In this capacity he does much of the work of a solicitor, liaising, between clients and barristers and giving advice.
Until he underwent heart surgery last year, he also gave a legal aid clinic in one of the women's refuges, and he is a Commissioner for Oaths.
In October 1996 he reemerged in the family planning world as one of the directors of the Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices clinic, which opened its doors in Merrion Square in a premises previously occupied by a doctor who had also long been associated with the family planning movement.
Frank Crummey's long absence from the family planning scene, and his lack of direct involvement in the complex arguments surrounding the two abortion referendums, would have left him ill prepared for the barrage of publicity his clinic has just received, and which he did not expect. "I thought there'd be a board meeting every three months," he said.
An executive with another family planning clinic described his current situation as being "an innocent man in the wrong place." A former executive in another described him as "very well meaning, very well intentioned, but a bit naive. He has no sense of strategy."
It has been a baptism of fire for the Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices clinic.
Mr Crummey, on behalf of the clinic, has stated he is as shocked as anyone else at the allegations.