John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is fair enough. I will return to my prepared questions.

I am tremendously concerned about developments in the matter of oversight of ethical committees. For reasons I do not have time to discuss today, I have had a long involvement in this area and encountered the extraordinary dysfunction and pathology of the way these committees worked in the past. In some cases they were under wholly inappropriate and illegal extrajudicial levels of scrutiny by imposed committees of religious compliance which were acting in several of our larger hospitals and preventing access to cancer drugs because research protocols specified the need for contraception, interestingly by some people who have been loudest in calling themselves "pro-life" in the past few weeks. Under proposed European directives, there is a need to regulate the ethical research committee sector. There is a colossal amount of misinformation, misapprehension and, possibly, disinformation. I know he is busy, but I would like the Minister's attention on this issue.

I am very troubled by the fact that it is continually stated the approvals process for clinical trials in Ireland is slow. That is not the case. We have a blisteringly rapid and appropriate process. It is one of the few things which works effectively and efficiently in our entire dysfunctional health service. It has given us a colossal competitive advantage compared to the neighbouring jurisdiction, the United Kingdom, to which many companies and research charities just do not bring their trials anymore because the approvals process is so slow. We are about to engage in a process which will impose a solution that is not needed to a problem that is not there. Not only is this one of those irritating little bureaucratic things which happens from time to time, it could cause real problems. The plan, under phase 2 of the current proposals, to allow HIQA to become the agency which regulates access to drugs and which regulates ethics committees is inappropriate. HIQA is an inspectorate and it should not be running anything. It is slowly being turned into the black ops or military wing of the HSE. This must be stopped and HIQA refocus on its function, which is inspection.