Brendan Ryan (Dublin Fingal, Labour)
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393. To ask the Minister for Health his views on whether the non-harm measures, that is, the removal of seagulls’ nests and eggs introduced in the Balbriggan area to reduce the increasing number of seagulls, are in the interest of public health in this area in view of available information (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47887/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Health Protection Surveillance Centre, HPSC, is Ireland’s specialist agency for the surveillance of communicable diseases.  It works in partnership with health service providers and similar organisations in Ireland and around the world, to provide the best possible information for the control and prevention of infectious diseases.  The role of the HPSC includes providing timely information and independent advice, carrying out disease surveillance, epidemiological investigation and related research and training.

In 2017, the HPSC undertook an investigation to determine if gulls posed a potential infectious risk and to attempt to quantify this in the most valid manner.  The main focus of the investigation was an examination of the potential for transmission from gulls to man, of infectious disease.  An extensive review of relevant international literature on the evidence for transmission of infectious disease from gulls to man indicated that, although disease carriage is relatively common amongst such birds, there is very little evidence of disease transmission to humans and that wild birds play a limited role in human infectious disease.

In Public Health, health threats are prioritised using a number of parameters, namely severity of disease, potential for transmission, number of cases of illness.  Available evidence, while indicating that gulls and other wild birds do carry potentially harmful pathogenic bacteria, does not indicate that they transmit these microbes to any significant extent, or in any meaningful amount, to humans despite these birds having been documented as carrying and excreting these bacteria, in close proximity to humans, for many decades.