Tesco Ireland has apologised for a "mistake" after one of its Dublin stores included an anti-abortion campaign group in its fundraising charity drive.
The retailer indicated it would not now be supporting the Every Life Counts organisation after a complaint.
Customers are given blue disc-shaped tokens at Tesco checkouts and may place them in one of three plastic drums at the store exit, each of them with a different charity’s name on it.
At the end of each month, the Tesco store divides a sum of money from its community fund among the charities based on the number of tokens they have received.
On Wednesday night, one customer tweeted the Tesco Ireland account with a picture of the token boxes in the Shankill store in Co Dublin. One of the charities pictured was Every Life Counts, described on the sign as a "support network for families whose child may not survive or die shortly after birth".
The customer asked Tesco if it realised Every Life Counts was “a politically motivated anti-choice group”.
Tesco’s social media team replied to the customer on Thursday thanking her for making it aware of this and said the token collection would be removed.
The retailer said it was reminding all area and store managers of its community fund rules to ensure this did not happen again.
Tesco later tweeted: “We do our best to ensure the causes we support through the Community Fund are politically neutral and we apologise for this mistake.”
Every Life Counts, which is registered with the Companies Registration Office, says the nature of its business is to work towards an Irish perinatal hospice.
It has been prominent in commentary on anti-abortion issues, including on the findings by the UN Human Rights Committee earlier this year. The Committee found that a woman’s human rights had been infringed because Ireland’s laws prevented her from having an abortion after a diagnosis which meant her baby would die in the womb or shortly after birth.
To date the Tesco Community Fund has supported over 5,000 local causes across Ireland. It is our policy to only include causes that are apolitical and neutral. When selecting a cause to participate in the Community Fund, we research each cause to understand what they are fundraising for. The inclusion of this cause was not in line with this policy and we apologise for any offence caused. We have now removed this cause from the Community Fund. To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we are retraining all our Store Managers and Area Community Champions on this policy.
In a statement, Tesco said its community fund had, to date, supported over 5,000 local causes across Ireland.
“It is our policy to only include causes that are apolitical and neutral. When selecting a cause to participate in the community fund, we research each cause to understand what they are fundraising for.
“The inclusion of this cause was not in line with this policy and we apologise for any offence caused. We have now removed this cause from the community fund. To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we are retraining all our store managers and Area Community Champions on this policy.”
A spokeswoman for Every Life Counts she was “appalled” that a customer would “seek to have any support removed from families who face the devastating news that their baby will not live for long after birth, simply because she has a position we do not share in regard to changes in the law”.
She said the organisation provided valuable support and information for parents, and gave them a forum to share their stories.
It also hosted remembrance days and memory-making days for the families and counselling for parents who had lost their babies, some of whom had been without counselling since their babies died.