Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is not here. Regarding methadone, I am delighted to hear that the Minister met with the families of people involving in the methadone scheme or who have had their lives ravaged by addiction. I am very supportive of the Minister visiting the families. For many people, particularly in these Houses, it is fine to talk about people in the abstract, be they in a methadone or direct provision centre or any sort of centre, as if they are a different type or sort of person but, as I am sure the Minister saw last night, these are normal people from normal families who walk among us and have just been hit in some unfortunate way and touched by the ravages of drug addiction. I very much welcome the Minister's visit last night. Methadone treatment is almost regarded as being negative. There is a perception that if somebody is on 10 ml of methadone for the rest of his or her life, that is somehow a bad thing.

To my mind, it is a good thing. If they need a maintenance dose to keep the show on the road and keep their lives in line, it is good to have that relationship with their prescribing doctor and their pharmacist to keep them on the straight and narrow. I very much welcome this and any additional supports that can be given to families. I welcome any measures that highlight what they have to deal with in their lives, the impacts on other children in the family and the extended family, and also people's positions in their neighbourhoods and communities. Stigma has been mentioned this morning. Families who have been ravaged by drugs often face strong push-back in their communities. I welcome any moves to support those families.

As was reported yesterday, in recent times there has been a significant increase in the incidence of mumps in our population. In Samoa, we have also seen a shutdown with the outbreak of measles. All of this is part of the global dumbing down when it comes to vaccination, fake news, the Wakefield generation coming of age and such. The net impact of the mumps outbreak is that we are going to have a generation of young men who will have fertility problems when they seek to start families. Is there any plan to try to highlight this? I have always thought that the young people who are affected are probably the key. If a young man discovers that his parents chose not to vaccinate him against mumps when he was a child, and now his future in terms of having children is going to be severely impacted, is there any plan to wake that generation up to the impacts of previous decisions on their healthcare? In terms of measles, the Minister said some time ago that he was exploring mandatory vaccinations and was seeking the position of the Attorney General. While I do not agree with mandatory vaccination in a normal setting, it is now high time we addressed this. We have the situation in Samoa. The UK has lost its measles-free status, as far as I know. This issue is encroaching on us and perhaps we should be prepared, if there is a confluence of events that leads to an outbreak here, to protect the population if we had to. I would be grateful if the Minister could give us his thoughts on that.