Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have spoken at great length over many years on these vaccine trials and it would be remiss of me not to do so today. I shared with the Seanad in recent weeks that I have done an extensive interview with the BBC covering this issue that will be broadcast. There has been some update on it in the last two weeks and I understand it will be broadcast in early July, which the BBC has confirmed to me and I am conscious that the footage of these Seanad deliberations will form part of that.

I want to reiterate that where children were in State care and where the State or its agents were in loco parentisthey had obligations. We know of extensive investigations and litigation, to which I am party, on these alleged drug trials. We know that the Taoiseach, when he was Minister for Health, commissioned Dr. Kiely, the then Chief Medical Officer, to do a preliminary investigation. We subsequently have sourced some additional information and a number of universities in Dublin were involved in that. We have no doubt that these drug trials took place; we are 100% satisfied of that and we have evidence to this effect. The British Medical Journalpublished the results of these vaccine trials so it is not news to the Department of Health or the Taoiseach, who was Minister for Health for some of the period when the investigations were ongoing, not when the trials were ongoing.

There has to be some mechanism where the State or its agents or institutions were aware and had on record that the vaccine trials took place on children, not necessarily because they were unwell but because there were many of them on the same diet in the same conditions in the same institution. In some cases many of them did not go out to school either so they had no access to the community. Where that happened it is imperative that there should be some record. Where records are held - and the Minister said before that there may not be records in certain places - that should form part of the information that is made available to those individuals or their families. It is critical that we do that. We do not know to what extent they may or may not have been damaged by these vaccine trials but we know for sure that they were commercial trials and that their results have been published extensively.

That is all I am prepared to say at this point and I would be interested to hear the Minister's response to that. I do not see why the Minister would be opposed to these amendments. There may be technicalities and good reasons why it cannot happen in this legislation and I am open to listening to that. I could not sit here in honesty and not raise the issue. We know and the Minister and his officials know that vaccine trials took place in institutions. Therefore, where the records clearly state that, I would like to see a situation where people, when they are accessing this information, can have sight of as much information as possible.