Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Health Products Regulatory Authority: Chairman Designate

9:30 am

Photo of John CrownJohn Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Ms Horan to her critically important role. I have been very involved in new drug development and I founded the country’s first national clinical research group so I have had extensive dealings over the years with the Irish Medicines Board, IMB, as it was then, now the HPRA. Over the past decade in general it has conducted its business in a professional fashion.

I must for the record say that what Deputy Ó Caoláin outlined as the side effects are alleged. This is a very important issue because at this point we have a vast wealth of international data suggesting that the HPV vaccines are very safe and have had a colossal impact in reducing the potential for cancer-causing viral infection in young girls and boys. I honestly know that Deputy Ó Caoláin means well and that many people have been approached directly by various representatives of the anti-vaccine movement, which is part of a larger anti-vaccine movement that is causing real problems around the world right now. I would not want this committee to appear in any sense to endorse the position that there is a proven danger associated with what I believe is one of the most important public health initiatives undertaken in recent years, namely, HPV vaccination.

Ms Horan should not take this in any sense as a criticism but perhaps she would clarify the position as people will ask about her own role as a fairly senior and influential person in the banking sector at a time when the sector collectively – I do not say it was every individual as I am sure there were dissenting voices - was involved in what we now know was a catastrophic failure, mainly of competence rather than of ethics, on the part of the banking sector in this country, which had awful consequences. I am delighted that Ms Horan was able to leave it and to do something else. Many people did not have that opportunity and found that they were in hock with negative equity mortgages that they-----

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