Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

An article in The Daily Telegraphin 2014 cited the words of Christy, who was adopted from the Bessborough mother and baby home in Cork.

My arms and legs were very badly scarred. But when I asked my mum why, she basically said when you arrived your arms were very sore and they were bandaged. I didn't know anything about vaccination trials. I've since been to a few doctors and they said they'd never seen anything like it - with so many injections.

Christy is just one of thousands of Irish children born or living in institutions who were used as guinea pigs provided by the religious orders for vaccine trials by the pharmaceutical industry. The big beneficiary of these trials was British pharmaceutical giant, Burroughs Wellcome and Company, as it was at the time, which is today known as GlaxoSmithKline, the sixth largest pharmaceutical company in the world, which had market capitalisation of Stg£81 billion as of August 2016, making it the fourth largest company on the London Stock Exchange. The company earned Stg£21.3 billion in 2013 from vaccines and drugs. Between 1960 and 1976 alone, more than 298 children across ten mother and baby homes, including Bessborough, were subject to experimental vaccine trials.

Over a period of almost 50 years, there were trials involving thousands of children, some of whom were mentally and physically disabled. This included children from dozens of institutions. Where was the consent? Some of the children grew up not realising for more than 30 years that they had been involved in these trials. The victims contacted their natural mothers. All the mothers contacted of whom we know said they had not been asked for permission. In 1962, theBritish Medical Journal seemed to confirm that parental permission was not sought when it said, "We are indebted to the medical officers in charge of the children's homes for permission to carry out this investigation on infants under their care". Consent was not a new concept in 1960-61. In 1947, the Nuremberg Code, which was developed as a result of the prosecution of Nazi doctors involved in experimenting on humans, stressed the need for the consent of subjects in clinical trials but here children were used as guinea pigs with no respect for their bodily integrity, treated differently from other citizens and, indeed, treated as lesser citizens. Changes were made to the 1960 and 1961 files under the control of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary in 2002 just weeks after they received a discovery order from the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. Admission and discharge dates for the mothers were altered because the original files would have shown they were not present to give their consent to these trials.

We will support the motion. It proposes a stronger, more comprehensive approach than that outlined by the Government, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. The mother and baby homes commission of inquiry has an interim report due at the end of the month. Has the commission called in representatives of GlaxoSmithKline and questioned them on their company's role in these events?

In conclusion, I would like to correct the record of the House on a matter relating to this subject. Speaking in a debate on the mother and baby homes on 9 March, I reported on a conversation I had with a survivor of the homes in 2010. I mistakenly stated that the gentleman concerned had been born in Bessborough whereas on checking I realised he had been born in the Castlepollard home and had investigated Bessborough later in his life as an adult. I ask that this correction be duly noted.

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