Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I strongly support this amendment and Senator O'Brien and others have put forward very good arguments in its favour. The amendment calls for further research and the issuing of recommendations, which is very straightforward.

In 1987, when I was Minister of State at the Department of Health, I chaired a committee on dental health and dental care in Ireland. I was heavily influenced, at that stage, by all of the dentists on that committee and the report of the committee recommended the retention of flouride in drinking water. Since then, however, I have developed very serious reservations on flouridation. First, flouridation involves putting a substance into water which is actually poisonous. More seriously, though, is the actual administering of flouride, which is shocking. It is a very amateurish operation. The process varies from one local authority to the next. I have no idea how much flouride is used and nobody in this House can tell us how many bags are thrown into the water at the water works. It is literally a case of bags of flouride being dumped into the water in an uncontrolled fashion. The Minister will have to address this, in conjunction with Irish Water. One of the first tasks for Irish Water should be to review the entire flouridation system.

The dentists on the aforementioned committee were, of course, convinced that flouride is wonderful for teeth but what about the rest of the body? We started putting flouride into our water in the 1950s but I believe if we were to suggest doing so today, we would have to have a referendum first. If we wanted to put flouride or any other substance into the public water system today, we would have to get the approval of the Irish people first.

This is a very serious issue and I congratulate my colleagues for tabling this amendment. I urge the Minister to accept amendment No. 24 in light of all of the available information. If he does not accept the amendment today, I would urge him to act on its content by setting up a group to review flouridation. If the provision for a review and the issuing of recommendations is not included in the Bill, the Minister should ensure that his Department carries out a thorough, detailed examination of every waterworks in Ireland.

It should thoroughly examine each water works in Ireland and who is administering them, and compare the amount of fluoride used in Roscommon with the amount used in Galway and elsewhere, just to assess if this is a theory or factually based. I have not gone to these plants but I am aware of the amount of fluoride from information from the Department of Health. If memory serves, the Department of Health budget provides the funding for fluoride. I will rest my case, but perhaps the Minister would consider it.