Ms Finola Cassidy:

I thank the Senator for her question. We would particularly like to raise the issue of what we call the "unacknowledged" thalidomide survivors. I will explain. The drug thalidomide was sold in Ireland, for example, in 1961. Thalidomide is the ingredient in the drug that causes the damage. Here it was sold under various trade names. There were about ten. One was packaged under the brand name Softenon. In 1961, 51,000 packages of that drug were sold here in that year alone. As I said, there were other forms of the drug in syrups, perhaps for a baby's soother to help with teething or for nerves. A man could take it. It was specifically the crossing of the placental barrier that caused the damage. To give more detail, the specific days of the pregnancy on which the drug was taken caused specific damage. For example, my mother probably took it on day 22 and day 23 and the arms were affected, as were my ears and there was the internal damage. It depended on what you took. That is why I was saying if somebody took it very regularly, they were one of those 90,000, sadly, who probably miscarried.

In the 1970s, when it was eventually agreed thalidomide was the cause of all these disabilities - and that was a long haul from birth to around 12 years of age - the State advertised and asked if children wanted to come forward. It brought some experts from Germany and they set up the Irish Thalidomide Medical Board. To this day, we are not sure how many people could have been affected in Ireland because there was a report undertaken, dictated by the Department of Health, around 1963 to look back at birth defects in Ireland. It was done by a lady called Dr. Victoria Coffey and never published, so we cannot be sure of the numbers. When we were 12 years of age people came forward. We know from Government records that more than 100 children came forward. These experts decided that 32 were recognised as thalidomide survivors. However, in the intervening years, there has been huge medical investigation into the drug thalidomide, especially because it has some good qualities. Members may have heard of its use in cancer treatment. Medical knowledge of the working of thalidomide has improved in leaps and bounds. We can now categorically say, and it is evidence-based, that there are other issues related to thalidomide that were just not picked up in the 1960s.

The medical board in the 1960s had the knowledge it knew then and disregarded many of the applicants because it was dealing in that knowledge at that time. We know that for a fact because our unacknowledged survivors have been examined by world experts and told categorically that they are thalidomide survivors. The committee could help us with something we need by explaining to the Government that there is new medical evidence and it would only be reasonable to allow those whom we call our members who are unacknowledged to come forward for a better and newer evaluation.

There are more records in Britain. Here, sadly, when we were 12 our parents had to show evidential proof to that committee that our mothers had taken thalidomide. I have sworn affidavits from the prescribing GP to my mother and the administration chemist down in Cork. All of this evidential proof had to be shown to the committee. How many people had the packet of a tablet 12 years after the event, especially when nobody was joining the dots to know that thalidomide was the cause of the damage at the time of the birth? That was not a fair criterion to have put on them.

I have spoken to a few people in the UK about how mothers felt enormous guilt about taking this drug. In some cases, they never admitted that they took it. We know of cases where, on their deathbed, mothers broke down and apologised. It was the first the survivors knew of their disability being caused by thalidomide. For all of those reasons, it is only timely, 60 years later, to correct all those errors and allow these unacknowledged survivors to have a fair assessment using modern medical knowledge.

The State, through Dáil questions and answers, regularly says it is open for all unacknowledged survivors to go to Germany to be assessed and the State will automatically accept those assessments. However, I must stress an important point because we cannot seem to get it across to the Department of Health. We now know that the criteria the Germans use in their assessments of thalidomide survivors are still very much based in that time of the 1960s criteria. Those criteria have not moved with the times and do not embrace the more modern knowledge. It is very important that we stress that the Department of Health cannot continue to suggest unacknowledged survivors go to the special Contergan Foundation in Germany for assessment. We know it is flawed and it would only add insult to injury if the Department kept stressing that this was the mechanism open to the unacknowledged. I hope that gives the Deputy some idea of the answer.