Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her comments. After my meeting last night, I am just so conscious of how grateful families impacted by addiction are that she and others raise these issues and that we talk about them here. They feel they are never talked about. We do not talk about addiction enough in Ireland but we talk even less about the impact of addiction on the family. The Deputy is right that the reason we do not do so is that there is a nice, cosy consensus and an ignorant view that this only happens to X type of person or in Y type of place. That is complete and utter bull. The phrase I kept thinking of last night is "There but for the grace of God go I." This could visit any of our homes or communities. Frankly, it is visiting all of our communities. A woman told me last night how the first time someone she knew became aware that her son was addicted to drugs was when she was sitting down watching Coronation Street. There was a knock on the door and she asked her husband to get up and open it and there were two men in balaclavas with baseball bats standing at their hall door looking to recover a drugs debt. This is a reality for people and we have to start talking about it. It is a real health crisis, a public health epidemic. There is a lot of that same ignorant stigma that we have around other social issues and the notion that it only happens to certain types of people. That is nonsense and we need to call time on it. In this committee or in a future configuration, we should be doing more on this. I intend to do a lot more on it. The UK has a helpline for families affected by addiction. I want to explore how we can look at this as well. We need to do a lot more.

On the issue of mumps, measles and mandatory vaccination, I know Deputy O'Connell is passionate about the whole area of vaccination. The current status in terms of my own thought process and policy development is that I am awaiting a report from the Health Research Board, HRB. I asked it to do a body of work on what could be effective. I am not interested in a stunt or something that looks like we are doing something. I want to do something. I have asked the HRB to look at what other jurisdictions have done that has proven effective in terms of combating vaccine hesitancy. I am expecting that report any day now and by the end of the year. I will read it alongside the advice of the Attorney General and come forward with policy proposals.

My view is that there may be issues with the Constitution in the context of education and schools. People have a constitutional right to a primary education. How a constitutional rights interacts with a particular issue may present a challenge. If, however, we are really serious about vaccination, we know that it happens prior to primary school. It actually happens when children are in crèches and other childcare facilities.

I make a plea to Early Childhood Ireland and others regarding the fact that there is nothing stopping crèches and childcare providers from making it a requirement for parents to show that their children have been vaccinated in order for them to be accepted by those facilities. This has become the norm in terms of how we deal with our family pets. It is quite astonishing that it is not the norm when it comes to dealing with children. If I were to send my child to a crèche, I would like to know that not only have I done right by her in terms of getting her vaccinated but that she is going into an environment where she cannot pick up other illness because other people have failed in their duties to protect public health. All of us should be calling on crèches and childcare providers to make this part of good practice and guidelines from today. I do not think there is any reason that this should not happen.

In terms of the Deputy's question regarding an effective campaign, I have heard her talk about how we can have an effective campaign for the generation that were not vaccinated - the Wakefield generation, as the Deputy refers to them. She is dead right. It is a really important campaign that we could run in colleges, etc. The Vaccine Alliance is looking at what is effective in terms of public awareness campaigns. I will certainly feed that back to it. The final point I want to make on vaccinations is that I had meetings with the social media companies recently. Social media has been a really great tool but would Brexit have happened, would Donald Trump have been elected, and would the uptake rate relating to the HPV vaccine have dropped so significantly if we did not have social media? Who knows. We certainly know that the spread of disinformation and misinformation on social media has contributed significantly to a decrease in vaccination rates, particularly around the HPV vaccine but also in respect of other vaccines. At the meetings, I was encouraged somewhat that they were doing some things and that they are certainly realising even from a business model point of view that their users expect them to do more. I am still a little concerned with Google wanting to keep as its "secret sauce" information relating to how one becomes the number one hit on a Google search. When I search the word "vaccination" on Google, I do not think it is acceptable that I get anything other than a reputable source of information at the top of the results list. We have agreed to keep in touch and work with Google. It has agreed to come in and speak to the Vaccine Alliance. A lot more work definitely needs to be done in that area.