John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

That embryo-destructive research is wrong in principle because it attacks the life of a human being at the earliest stage of his or her development is also backed up by the absolute inability of embryonic stem cells to have any successful clinical application. It is saddening to think of how much money, like the alchemists of the Dark Ages, has been wasted when so much could have been achieved for the public by placing these funds into adult stem cell research.

Recently under the heading "How they can rebuild you", a report in The Sunday Times described how scientists and doctors in Britain and Spain set about creating the first tissue-engineered trachea or windpipe, using a patient's own stem cells. These are the "worker" cells that replenish and rebuild the body's organs. This new stage of research and treatment builds on well-established techniques used for decades, like stem cell transplants in cancer patients to replace cells in their own bone marrow lost as a result of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. While these are stem cell breakthroughs, they use adult stem cells.

I have heard and read about the words "hope", "potential" and "possibility" about embryonic stem cell research and yet there is nothing. After all the billions that have been spent unsuccessfully it must be questionable whether it is fair to be offering hope to people when the reality is that all the success has come from adult stem cell research. The scientists doing the research that is bearing such astonishing fruit and grabbing the headlines in the news are all doing adult stem cell research. We need to invite in more of these scientists who are doing adult stem cell research. We need to make Ireland a grant rich environment for them. If we build the research centres they will come. Ireland could become as much a byword in adult stem cell research as it is in software development.

In Cologne there is a group called XCell, about which I spoke in the last term. Nothing has changed in the years that have passed since we discussed stem cell research except that more positive results have come from adult stem cell research. I note XCell is treating people with diabetes mellitus type 1, those who have suffered a stroke, those with spinal cord injuries and those with multiple sclerosis with stem cells taken from adult tissue. It is also treating people with Parkinson's disease and people with cerebral palsy. What right has it to tell people there is hope when, after 48 years, including 27 years of medical attempts, there has been no success in that regard. All the success is coming from adult stem cell research.

Senator Mullen's Bill would help, not hinder, in making Ireland an attractive destination for such scientists. There is an opportunity for Ireland — one we should not ignore in these economically difficult times — to coax some of the leading scientists in the field of adult stem cell research to come here. We can attract them here if we seize the moment and send out the message that we are putting resources into adult stem cell research. I am conscious there is a proposal that the Government invest money, as is the case in the UK, America and many other emerging first world countries, in rebooting the economy. This would present a wonderful opportunity for us to have ethical research into an attractive area that is bearing results.

I am conscious that the professor of regenerative medicine at Newcastle University, Colin McGuckin, has decided to leave the UK and relocate to the University of Lyons at the start of next year with his team of ten research personnel, all experts in adult stem cell research. The reason he is leaving Britain is that the university and the UK funding agencies are investing money first in embryonic stem cell research despite, as he said, the clinical benefits offered by adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell research is already delivering the goods. Research using stem cells got by disassembling human embryos is not producing new cures or new treatments.

The situation has not changed from the last term. First, it is ethically wrong to use an embryo which must be destroyed to get the embryonic stem cells. Second, there are no results from such research. Nothing positive has emerged. All the results are emerging from adult stem cell research.