Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am happy. I just want to talk about amendment No. 111, which was ruled out of order. The Cathaoirleach is the chairperson and I have no difficulty with that. Before today, the Cathaoirleach invited me to come and discuss the issue with him and tease out the issues. I acknowledge that, to be fair to the Cathaoirleach. He has a job to do. We operate under standing orders, which I fully accept. The Cathaoirleach was not here earlier when I made a point of clarification that it was not the Minister who ruled any amendment out of order. That is not the role or prerogative of the Minister. It is the prerogative of the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad, subject to all the relevant conditions and standing orders. I acknowledge that. However, I thought it was best to outline the situation for the benefit of the people listening to the debate who are not politicians and do not quite understand the system.

I know amendment No. 111 has been ruled out of order. I am not asking the Cathaoirleach to respond because I do not want to get into a two-way engagement. That would not be right, given the ruling of the Cathaoirleach. However, I could not ascertain how the amendment could in any way give rise to an expense to the Exchequer. My point does not refer to this section but it is worth noting that section 4(1) states, "Regulations made under this Act may contain such incidental, supplementary and consequential provisions as appear to the person making the regulations to be necessary or expedient for the purposes of the regulations." My amendment was about regulation. However, I am not opening up that to discussion because a decision has been determined in that regard.

I subsequently got independent parliamentary and legal advice. That advice drew my attention to the fact that the Minister makes the regulations. Under section 4(1), "Regulations made under this Act may contain such incidental, supplementary and consequential provisions as appear to the person making the regulations [who is, in this case, the Minister] to be necessary or expedient for the purposes of the regulations."I will leave all that, however, and I will not go back over the very important section we just discussed. I am not asking the Minister to respond, although it is clearly his prerogative to do so, but I would like to think we could have some engagement within a matter of weeks.

I might as well tell the Minister that I am committed to pursuing litigation with a group of people with regard to the drug trials. The State will clearly have to be involved in this. I believe in mediation, consultation, engagement and collaborative approaches. As a result of this business, my personal experience and the experience of other people in the institutions, and having noted the Minister's commitment and concerns in this regard, I firmly believe that we should endeavour to sit down as responsible politicians and see how we can address this particular aspect through some other mechanism.

I note the Minister told the House that he has engaged with GlaxoSmithKline and its successors, and maybe others. I do not believe that engagement was very successful, not on the Minister's part but in terms of the willingness or openness of these companies to engage. By having these discussions, more information has come to light. I call on the Minister and his team in Government to seriously examine their engagement with GlaxoSmithKline and others in terms of the very lucrative contracts the State has with pharmaceutical companies that have been involved in illegal drug trials on minors in this State. The time has come for us to say that whatever happened in the past, these companies are trading very profitably. They know and accept that they carried out unethical drug trials on children in our State. I would like to think that is no longer happening. I believe, however, that we now need to look at using political and financial leverage on these pharmaceutical companies. I do not believe this case will go away. The matter is of huge concern. I ask that we collaborate and work together across these Houses to determine if there is any mechanism by which we can address these issues in the committees and through debates in the Houses. I will certainly commit to using the limited Private Members' time available to me in the rest of my time in the Seanad, however long as that may be, to get some sort of justice for the people who were subjected like guinea pigs to drug trials by pharmaceutical companies in this State.