Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I had hoped to move a reasoned amendment at this stage to delay the Second Reading of the Bill for 30 days because I believe it is being rushed. It is being rushed because we are being asked to consider legislation without all the relevant information being disclosed to us.

Let us remember that the commission of inquiry was established by the Houses of the Oireachtas and not by the Minister or the Government. The reports should have been published and made available to this House before we considered this legislation. The sixth interim report, which Deputy Connolly will speak about later, specifically raises the issues before us today in terms of the transfer of records to the Minister.

However, we are being asked to consider this legislation without having access to information that was intended to be presented to us. The Minister's predecessor, former Deputy Zappone, said on 16 February last that she intended to publish that interim report as soon as practicable. We are being asked to consider this legislation without that relevant information being provided to us. That is wrong.

I had drafted a considered amendment providing that the legislation be delayed for one month and that the final report of the commission of investigation would not be published until 30 November. I received the support of Deputies Connolly, Berry, Canney, Fitzpatrick, Grealish, Lowry, Verona Murphy, Shanahan, Pringle and Joan Collins on the point that the report would be made available to us before we would consider Committee Stage of the Bill. The reason it is imperative to do that is that the Minister will not answer me as to what records are being held under article 1(V) of the terms of reference of the commission, concerning vaccine trials.

This is an issue I have consistently raised in the House for the past 20 years and I have yet to get clear answers on it. It was referred to the Laffoy commission but because of a legal challenge, the commission did not consider it. In an act of nothing short of criminal negligence, the records collated by the Laffoy commission were handed back to the original sources in 2012. When this legislation establishing the commission of investigation was before us in 2015, I asked if those records could and would be acquired again. The then Minister, former Deputy James Reilly, assured me that could and would happen. Since that date, however, I have received no information, as a Member of this House, as to what records were collated. Now we are being told that even if those records are retrieved from the various orders again, we will not be able to see them for the next 30 years.

The reality is the children in these institutions were used as lab rats. They were the guinea pigs for vaccine trials. It is unbelievable to think that the normal, standard vaccine at the time, the three-in-one whooping cough vaccine, was given to the general population but the trial vaccine was given to the children in the institutions because those involved did not have to worry about the issue of consent. The State provided consent for that because some of these trials were published in scientific papers. There is no way these trials were ethical when all of the guinea pigs were children in the institutions. While some of the trials were supposed to take place for a two-year period starting in 1973 and consent was given by the National Drugs Advisory Board at the time, that particular trial went on into 1976. From digging around, we know there were trials in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Some go back to the 1930s but none of us knows when they finished.

The children involved, who are adults today, have a right to know what concoctions they received and why they were involved in trials. Some of them were involved not in one, two or three trials but in four separate trials. No records are available because they were handed back to the religious orders back in 2012 and we have not heard anything since. Now we are being told that even when those records come back, they will locked in a safe for the next 30 years. Sixty or 70 years after these babies were used as guinea pigs, with some having potentially suffered adverse medical conditions as a result of being used in those trials, there is not much point in these people getting access to those records. Their children and grandchildren can find out why their grandparent had a particular chronic illness because he or she was used as a guinea pig. The State colluded in that. The religious orders were involved in it as well, as was Wellcome. It is a scandal that those particular records were handed back by the State. I argued at the time that they should not be handed back but, sadly, my argument fell on deaf ears.

I have no doubt about the Minister's sincerity or that of Deputy Calleary. I know the Minister wants to do the right thing. These records will not be available for 30 years. The Minister knows that and I know it. The Minister also knows there is a culture of non-disclosure because if there were not such a culture, those records would not have been handed back in 2012 and measures the Minister is now taking would have been taken at that stage. I ask the Government not to rush this legislation but to give us the chance to consider it properly.

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