Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Responsibility for vaccines and vaccine safety lies mainly with the chief medical officer and I will certainly ask him to meet any group. I should say that of the 860 adverse events reported to the HPRA, the vast majority are the normal kind of side effects people have from all kinds of vaccines, like somebody getting a sore arm, fainting and so on. What I would be very concerned about in this case is sending out the wrong message to people that, somehow, the HPV vaccine is dangerous. There is no evidence that it is and the European Medicines Agency is carrying out a review to confirm that. On the other hand, there is very strong evidence that it prevents cervical cancer, which is why it is given. It is the only vaccine that prevents cancer, so it is modern miracle in that sense.

The committee will recall the scare we had previously in respect of autism. Quite a number of parents at that time believed - and some still believe - that the vaccines caused autism because they were administered around the time the symptoms of autism often develop. We have to be very careful not to allow these kinds of ideas to take hold because if somebody has a disease or illness they cannot explain, the natural thing is to blame something that happened around that time. Vaccines are often blamed, although it is very rarely proven that they are the cause. Nonetheless, the European Medicines Agency is carrying out a review to reassure people there are no long-term side effects from the vaccine.