Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have one or two questions and I wish to reply to some of the things that have been said. I am not a medical expert, I am a politician but above all I am a parent. Like Senator Crown, I have four beautiful daughters, two of whom have gone through all the vaccination stages for cervical cancer. As a parent my issue is trust and who I trust. I trust my general practitioner. I have gone to my GP for the past 40 years. He has been with me at each stage. We went through all the various stages of illness, my pregnancies and so on. Therefore, a sense of trust has been built up. As Deputy Naughten has noted, with every vaccination a parent realises there is a small percentage or chance that something can go wrong. It is like having an operation. I have a beautiful granddaughter who has had all her vaccinations.

There is an issue about accountability and I wish to develop the point made by Deputy Naughten. When children go to school or start in a creche, there should be a format to ensure every child has received his or her vaccinations. Since she has started in the creche, my granddaughter has picked up everything going in the classroom. I believe many children are going to school, including, unfortunately, some children who are from other countries, who do not have the proper vaccinations. This is a real issue for many parents. I thank the delegations for the presentations. I found both of them very interesting. However, as a parent my trust lies with my GP. He is the medical expert and I am not. I am unsure whether it is naivety or blindness but at the level of being a parent there is a time to put the politician away for a while. I trust my GP when I go to see him and I trust the information and evidence he provides. This is the reason I go and I know that is the same for many parents throughout the country. They do it for the same reasons, because a trust has been built up with the general practitioner.