Health Service – rationing – resources
In setting eligibility criteria for infertility treatment, a health authority was legally entitled to use age as a criterion when faced with budgetary restrictions; and was not obliged to provide the service on demand ‘regardless of the financial and other concerns of the authority’. The authority had acted on medical advice that in-vitro fertility treatment was generally less effective for women over the age of 35 and it was not for the courts to impose the appropriate cut-off point.