Cathal Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is most welcome to the House. I rise on behalf of myself, the Coeliac Society of Ireland and Councillor Brian O'Donoghue of Carlow County Council. This matter relates to people who suffer both with coeliac disease and with gluten intolerance. The estimates in Ireland now are that approximately one in 100 people - approximately 45,000 people - suffer with coeliac disease, with an estimated 500,000 people being gluten intolerant. The significance is that people find themselves unable to consume and eat wheat, barley and rye. We can imagine all the food that is produced with wheat flour, to which people who are coeliac disease are allergic - wheat flour is commonly used to thicken up and in ingredients in cooking - and therefore we understand that they can find themselves with symptoms which are most commonly like food poisoning. Unfortunately, over time this culminates in significant medical distress. Ultimately, some coeliacs find themselves having anaemia, osteoporosis and other complications.Ireland does not have a screening programme. If people find they are having a reaction to wheat flour, they go to their GP, who performs blood tests, and ultimately they are diagnosed as being gluten intolerant or as a coeliac. Perhaps they might need a scope and further examination thereafter.

Several countries have introduced coeliac screening for children who are under the age of 18. For example, the home of pizza and pasta, Italy, introduced this screening programme in 2023. It found that approximately one in 60 people in Italy, or 1.65% of children who were tested through simple blood tests, were found to have coeliac disease. What is interesting about this is that 60% of those children were undiagnosed prior to screening. I support the calls from the Coeliac Society of Ireland to introduce this measure into Ireland. It is important, as the disease and the significant impact it has on individual people's lives gets better known, that there is an opportunity to screen people with a simple blood test so they can get the treatment and diagnosis that they require in advance. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's feedback.