Over €1m ‘wasted’ on vaccine trials challenge

OVER €1 million in taxpayers’ money was wasted on reviewing issues surrounding the testing of vaccines on children because of a legal challenge, according to the State’s spending watchdog.

The Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) report on the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse looked at one of its additional roles, which was to inquire into several vaccine trials on children. It had been decided to assign the extra role to the abuse inquiry by the then health minister Micheál Martin in June 2001.

However, a legal challenge ultimately cut out the Commission’s role in inquiring into the vaccine trials, but not before huge legal and administrative bills mounted up.