Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very concerned about this whole debate, where it is going and the comments made by some of the Deputies opposite. I am alarmed to hear we are getting into this space again. Deputy O'Sullivan is almost implying that there is some sort of plot from the pharmaceutical industry against people, that it is all about those in the industry making money and that this is not based on evidence or scientific advice.

I am also very concerned to hear a Fianna Fáil Deputy calling for a vaccine or drug to be withdrawn without scientific evidence to back it up. That bothers me because we have been here before. We had a similar scare around the MMR causing autism, which some people still believe. Children developed autism and parents connected the vaccine to autism because it was given around the time that those symptoms appeared. Some people still believe in that connection, even though the doctor who came up with it has retracted and been struck off and even though there is no scientific evidence to support it. The result of that scaremongering and irresponsible behaviour by people who should know better was that some people got measles, mumps and rubella because their parents did not vaccinate them. There is a similar issue on which the jury is still out in respect of narcolepsy, whether it was caused by a vaccine or was coincidental and caused by something else such as a virus.

What do we know about this vaccine? We know that it does prevent cervical cancer, which is an awful cancer that kills many women every year. We know it prevents genital warts, head and neck cancers, and also penile and anal cancers in men. We have scientific evidence that this is the case. We do not know if these long-term psychological and physical effects that some people are reporting are any more common among girls who have had the vaccine than among those who have not. The Swedish-Danish study done so far, which went back over a million girls, 300,000 of whom had the vaccine, did not see any higher incidence of any diagnosis or disease in the 300,000 who had the vaccine compared to the 700,000 who did not.

I appeal to the Members opposite, to Deputies in general and to Senators to be responsible in their comments on this matter because scares in respect of people using medicines and vaccines cost lives. Any decisions that are taken must be based on the scientific facts and the epidemiological evidence, and nothing else. No meeting with me will change that. These decisions are made based on scientific and expert advice and I appeal to Deputies to be responsible in their comments and actions around this issue.

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