My purpose in moving this amendment was to ensure the fullest possible discussion in the House on any proposal that any area in the country should have flourine added to its piped water supply. As it stands, Section 8 provides that the Minister shall make regulations and that they shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas as soon as may be after they are made. It also states that if a resolution annulling a regulation is passed by either such House within the next subsequent 21 days on which that House has sat after the regulation is laid before it, the regulation shall be annulled accordingly, but without prejudice to the validity of anything previously done thereunder. My objection to that is that it may permit the fluoridation of a public water supply in the area of a local authority which has already gone on record as being opposed to the fluoridation of its public water supply. If this House is in recess, some months might pass before it would have an opportunity of reviewing a regulation made under the Act by the Minister.
I feel that despite the efforts of those opposed to the fluoridation of public water supplies to make the public aware of what the Minister is endeavouring to do, there are many people, some of them members of this House, who are not yet aware that the deliberate intention of the Bill is to put fluorine poison into public water supplies and, because people have not yet considered this matter fully, I think no regulation should be made, no regulation should be enforced or operated, unless and until this House and the other House have given the matter their fullest consideration.
We are aware that some local authorities have already gone on record as being opposed to the fluoridation of their water supplies. That being so, I believe the House has an obligation to ensure that fluorine is not put into the water supplies of these local authorities until it has had the fullest opportunity of considering the matter, and I feel the House has not yet properly debated this radical proposal. Of its 147 members, I believe only ten members have yet spoken their minds in public on this very important matter and it has amazed me that those speakers who did so from the opposite side of the House, on each occasion on which they rose, showed they had not read the remarks of those opposed to the Bill or, apparently, had not been present when we spoke. If they were present, they must have been fast asleep because the same irrelevant argument were recited by them whenever they spoke. They endeavoured to draw a comparison between flouridation and pasteurisation, which are two entirely different matters. Even the Minister himself has indicated that he has not given due regard to what has been said by those opposed to the Bill and he has deliberately accused them of the basest motives and gross recklessness.
