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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Dec 1972

Vol. 264 No. 7

Committee On Finance. - Adjournment Debate: Thalidomide Victims.

I sought permission to raise this matter on the Adjournment because of the difficulty I have been experiencing by way of the unsatisfactory replies I have been receiving to questions regarding what action the Government intend to take to assist thalidomide victims. I have been raising the matter here since 1966 but to no avail.

Anybody who read this week's Sunday Times will know that that paper indicated our Government for their apparent callousness in not giving attention to this problem. During the next few minutes I hope to be able to illustrate that these unfortunate thalidomide children and their families have not been treated with the greatest sympathy. We are all aware of the dreadful deformities attributable directly to the drug, thalidomide, but because of the reticence of the Department of Health and of the Government's decision to refuse to allow publication of a report on this matter, we do not know exactly what is the extent of the deformity of the 84 children concerned. The thalidomide disaster was peculiar in so far as the deformities were specific to that drug. Apart from a few cases I am not aware of the extent of the deformities here but I would suggest that babies were born here without limbs, some deaf, some blind, some mentally deficient and others with internal abnormalities. These babies of 1962 are now becoming the deformed teenagers of 1972. This human tragedy is of a lifelong duration both for the victims and for their parents and other members of their families.

In addition to discussing the gross deformities of the victims I wish to discuss also the emotional and financial burden to the families concerned. We know of the continuing heartbreak of mothers who are experiencing the result of this tragedy. Many children are without limbs, some have bone deformities while others are minus some bones. These defects require hospitalisation. Many of the defects were discovered some years after birth.

I have asked the Minister many times whether he would consider ensuring that every thalidomide victim was afforded free, all medical and hospital services and surgical appliances but I could get no such assurance from him. The tragedy in Ireland can be attributed in no small measure to the negligence of the Department of Health who allowed, under our laws, the dispensing of this drug over the counter. The labels on the containers of the drugs carried a note which said that the drug was safe for mother and child. The Department allowed those labels to be put on the containers. When suspicions were first aroused, no effort was made by the Department to stop the sale or distribution of the drug. They did not act in November of 1961 when the deformities attributable to the drug were made known first in Germany and in Britain.

As the Sunday Times pointed out, two further months elapsed before any action was taken by the Government or by the company concerned in withdrawing the drug from the market here. Because of this I have no hesitation in indicting the Department of Health for their seeming negligence in this regard.

I asked the Minister if he would consider publishing the report of the survey that was carried out into the extent of the deformities but he told me he would not do so. As the Sunday Times pointed out also, the doctor who carried out the survey was forbidden by the Department to publish the scientific report. This was against all principles where scientific reports are concerned and I see it as an effort by the Department to cover up the extent of the deformities. In Britain and in all other countries where there are thalidomide victims such scientific reports were published. The lame excuse given by the Department for their refusal to allow publication of the report was that it might identify the victim. Scientific reports are published regularly involving people but the question of identification has never arisen.

I deplore this action by the Department and by the Minister who must accept responsibility for it. There is no valid legal or moral reason why the report should not be published.

When I asked the Minister what was the cost to date to the State in respect of these children, he told me that it would not be worth asking the health boards to provide the information because they could not identify the children. Yet, the Minister knows that there are 84 victims purporting to have deformities that are attributable to thalidomide and as every doctor knows, the deformities are specific to that drug because it was one of the interesting aspects of the drug that it produced specific deformities. Therefore, there is no difficulty whatever in recognising the particular conditions but I cannot accept the Minister's reply to the effect that there is difficulty in establishing the identity of children whose handicaps are due to their mothers having taken this drug. The Minister told me that it would take too long to establish the frequency and cost of the services provided. This would be very necessary information in giving us an indication of the extent of the deformities and of the extent and frequencies of hospitalisation for these children.

Time and again the Minister has told me that the matter is the responsibility of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Minister for Foreign Affairs is merely acting on behalf of the Minister for Health, who must accept the responsibility for this tragedy, and who is trying to evade his responsibility when he says that the matter is one for the Department of Foreign Affairs. The only positive step taken by the Minister or his predecessor was the insertion in the national newspapers of an advertisement asking the parents of these victims to notify the Department of the degree of the deformity so that the information could be passed to the German company but they made it clear that any claim on behalf of the victims was the responsibility of the claimant. The Department denied any responsibility in this regard and would not undertake any action on behalf of the parents in their claim for compensation. This is a deplorable situation especially in view of the tragedy involved. The insertion of the advertisement could not be construed as being positive Government intervention.

There has been no effort to my knowledge of medical assessment in this country by doctors on behalf of the German company. I would have thought that this would be a very constructive gesture on the part of the Government to insist on this being done by the German medical assessors so that we might be able to decide what compensation would be due to the victims. If the Minister says that the Sunday Times article is incorrect or that the paper is irresponsible in its statement, he has not issued any official denial of the facts that these people will not receive proper compensation. I heard tonight that the British distillers' company have announced that they are setting up a fund to provide £12 million during a ten-year period for 242 victims. This amounts to £50,000 per victim and if this is accepted by the claimants the sum of £2,500 will be paid immediately in respect of each victim. This is positive action but so far as we are concerned we do not know whether any money is to be made available for victims here. This is where I say the Minister has contradicted himself. He says that the Department are not responsible and that the people concerned must make their own individual claims. Despite this he said on the radio the other night that the Department of Foreign Affairs were negotiating with the German company on behalf of the victims. I would like the Minister to clarify this point because there appears to be a contradiction in what he said.

It would appear from what the Sunday Times has stated and from their research work into this matter that the ex gratia payment to these victims will be minimal. We have a greater obligation than this to these people who through no fault of their own are victims of this great tragedy. They trusted the directions and felt they had some security in purchasing a drug which was freely available over the counter. I indict the Department of Health for negligence in this matter and for treating these people with complete indifference.

I believe the Minister is sympathetic to these people but I think he should accept, first, full responsibility for the legal cost for these people. We have no free legal aid in this country. It has been pointed out that legal costs for these people is enormous. Secondly, the Minister should make a declaration that medicines, hospitalisation and all surgical appliances will be supplied free for these victims, irrespective of the income of their families. This should be for the rest of their lives because they will need continuous care, attention, artificial limbs and other appliances. There is a moral obligation on us to provide these for them.

Thirdly, I would like to see the Government set up a trust fund similar to that provided by the British Government to assist with the financial burden involved in the welfare of these children for the rest of their lives. This would not be a great burden on the State as we have spent money foolishly in the past. It would be a great help to thalidomide children and other children disabled as a result of congenital abnormalities.

The assistance we are looking for is not specifically for thalidomide children but was prompted by the thalidomide tragedy. The Minister for Health should not state that he will ask the Government to set up a fund to provide for these children. This would be a very humane gesture to these people. We cannot solve the problems for them; we cannot restore limbs which have not grown or are deformed; we cannot restore normality to them but we can ease their burden, let them know there is national sympathy for them and we can ensure that there is no financial burden on them for the rest of their lives. We should ensure that the welfare of these children is provided for under a proper trust.

I ask the Minister seriously to consider the points I have raised. It should not be a party political issue. I also ask him to reconsider the question of passing the responsibility to the Department of Foreign Affairs. I would like him to state that he and his Department will accept full responsibility and that the Department of Foreign Affairs will only act as his agents in negotiating on his behalf. The cases should be tried in the Irish courts and there should be some means of having representatives of Chemie-Grünenthal subpoenaed to attend the Irish courts so that those cases could be resolved here. The Minister should seek legal advice on this matter. These people have enough tragedy in their lives without having to go to Germany where they have a serious language problem.

I should like to join with Deputy O'Connell in urging the Minister to do something for these children. The thalidomide disaster represents a human tragedy which is very hard to imagine. It has meant that malformed babies were born and they have a life of handicap ahead of them.

We are among the consumer countries in relation to many of these drugs. We do not have—I am not in a position to question whether we can have—the means of applying proper standards. It is very much a matter of trial and error. In this unfortunate incident an omelette was made and it is very hard to unscramble that particular omelette. The unfortunate people are there and they are the victims of something which went wrong.

I would like to join with Deputy O'Connell in urging that we should not pass the buck from one Department to another. We suffered, in relation to this, comparatively more than Britain. There is a problem here and it should be a Government responsibility. The Minister ought to take this matter up with the Government, get legislation, if necessary, or establish a fund and I am certain the people would support any such move.

In reply to the observations that have been made here tonight I want to say that I have already dealt with this matter in great detail in connection with a number of parliamentary questions. I do not know whether I am supposed to go over all the ground again but I have answered a great number of questions on this subject.

First of all, I would like to say that there are children born each year with severe congenital deformities apart from thaliomide. There are blind and deaf children born each year, whose mothers did not take thalidomide. There are children born with deformed limbs. I want to contradict what Deputy O'Connell said when he suggested that the characteristics of thalidomide deformities were entirely specific and entirely apart from any other deformities.

I also awant to make it clear that the thalidomide drug at the time when it was being used was considered a very safe drug. It is completely a hindsight sensationalist attitude on the part of Deputy O'Connell to suggest that the label had anything to do with the subsequent information as to its harmful effects. The company stopped the distribution of thalidomide in December, 1961, within one month of the dangers being established. Then the national drug advisory boards were formed both in Britain and in this country and greater steps are now taken to prevent the issue of drugs that have not been properly tested, although there will always be some cases where boards may perhaps not make a right decision, but so far as I know this has not happened.

Do I have to go over again what we have been doing about it? We received an offer of compensation by the German manufacturers of thalidomide which should apply to Irish children born with defects attributable to the drug. We also issued advertisements inviting parents and others to furnish particulars of the cases for transmission to the manufacturers, and 84 parents replied to the advertisements. We do not know how many of those will be admitted as being parents of children who suffered as a result of the intake of thalidomide prior to the birth of the child.

Then we translated all the documents into English that were required relating to the claims and we circulated the translations to the claimants concerned, and we assisted in providing information to the voluntary association of parents involved in claims on behalf of their children. Not all the parents belong to this association. There is a group of about 20 parents. The others apparently think they are able to pursue their claims without needing to belong to the association.

The Department of Foreign Affairs are keeping in touch with events in Germany and I have to rely on them as to whether there is any purpose in their making any further representations in relation to the amount of compensation to be made available. It is a fact in regard to the persons who have been recognised to have suffered from taking thalidomide and who had deformed children that the amount of compensation per child is just half in the case of German and Irish children of what it is in England. I have asked the Department of Foreign Affairs to see if anything can be done in regard to this. I doubt very much if anything can be done. The terms proposed under the German settlement are a capital payment varying from £130 to a maximum of £3,250 and a monthly pension of £13 to £60, depending in each case on the degree of severity.

There are matters in connection with which we are in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs and one is whether, due to the inflationary effects that are taking place, it would be better if the whole of the amount was paid in the form of capital. I received representations from a representative of the 20 parents of these children asking me to approach the Minister for Finance in order that when the income becomes available it will not be subject to income tax. I have also been approached to request the Minister for Justice to see that, if the compensation is made through the wards of court, the minimum of legal costs will be involved.

This representation did not make any other request to me, except of course that if the Department of Foreign Affairs believed that they could secure better compensation terms from the German Government and the company concerned, they should do so. We are always in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs and I think they can do this work far better than my Department in this case.

In regard to the treatment of these unfortunate children, they have been supplied with special artificial limbs; training has been given to the children in the use of the appliances, and schooling is being given, where special facilities are required, and then, of course, there is the question of vocational assessment and placement service where this is applicable. I have had no complaints about the training or about rehabilitation or about the supply of appliances from anyone; nor have I had any complaint that those in the upper income group have had to pay too much, that the cost was burdensome to them. It may be that in some cases those who are at the lower end of the upper income group were able to get a contribution from the health boards on a hardship basis which, of course, can be done in connection with very expensive medical or hospital services in the upper income group.

As I have already told the House, I am considering whether there should be some form of disability assistance to the families where children suffered permanently from severe congenital defects. If this were to be done it would have to apply far beyond the thalidomide range of defects. It would have to apply to families of all children who suffered from congenital defects and would have to be examined very carefully to see how we could operate such a scheme. On a population, pro rata to the British Government scheme, the cost of a scheme of this kind would be of the order of £200,000. Every year we have provided additional sums of one kind or another to help people in trouble. It is simply a question of trying to do the best we can with the available financial resoures.

I want to assure the House that if I thought the Department of Foreign Affairs were being lax either in not ensuring that the claims would be assessed and examined as rapidly as possible or in not taking any action which they should take in order to persuade the German company concerned that they ought to pay more compensation to Irish parents than to German parents, I would naturally make representations to them. However, as the House must realise, it would be very difficult for the Department of Foreign Affairs to secure for the parents of these children more funds than the parents of German children will receive. If it is to be said that the social services in Germany are superior to ours, then that is one reason why I am having the question of some form of assistance to parents, where they need it, provided, and I will make the decision about that as soon as possible.

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 14th December, 1972.

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