John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make one final point given that we spend enough time in this room discussing raiméis. This issue is extremely important because if the wrong message is sent from this room, it could kill people. The argument is being advanced that we do not need vaccination because we have screening. This is a little like arguing that we do not need to prevent children from playing with matches or drunks from falling asleep with a cigarette in their hands because we have a fire department or that we do not need to wear seatbelts because we have neurosurgeons who will patch up one's brain if one receives a head injury. We need to waste as little time as possible on this issue. It is widely accepted that no jurisdiction in the world has discontinued the vaccine programme and no leading group of experts has stated we should stop vaccinating for cervical cancer. Furthermore, there are no proven cases - there are temporarily associated cases - of any deaths or serious life threatening injuries from this vaccine.