Parents urged to ensure children have measles jab as concern over outbreak grows

While vaccination rates for measles, mumps, and rubella are high, they have not reached the recommended rate of 95%.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has urged parents of children under 10 to ensure they receive an MMR vaccine, as concerns grow over a possible measles outbreak.

Mr Donnelly said that there is a “high probability” of an outbreak in Ireland, after the HSE carried out a risk assessment last month.

Speaking outside Government buildings yesterday, Mr Donnelly said that while vaccination rates for measles, mumps, and rubella are high, they have not reached the recommended rate of 95%.

Across the country, most counties have rates between 90% and 94% vaccination, as of quarter two 2023. 

In Cork, just the West Cork Local Health Office has a rate of less than 90%, going between 85% and 89%.

The counties with the lowest rates of take-up are in Louth and Meath, where the HSE estimates it is less than 80%.

Mr Donnelly also flagged the number of young men, aged between 19 and 21, where the MMR vaccination rate is at 80%.

“Normally, our children are vaccinated at 12 months and then in primary school. Some people have missed that,” Mr Donnelly said.

“Our rates are still high, they’re still in the high 80s, but they’re not at that 95% we want.”

Mr Donnelly said that with the potential for an outbreak, those who are unvaccinated against measles are at risk.

“We've seen outbreaks in Romania, in France, in Austria, most recently in England,” Mr Donnelly said.

The matter was discussed at Cabinet, with Mr Donnelly updating ministers about HSE proposals for a catch-up programme at both secondary schools and colleges.

The health minister also told Government colleagues that the reason for higher levels of non-immunity is likely due to misinformation about the MMR vaccine, which falsely implicated it with a risk of autism.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly told Government colleagues that the reason for higher levels of non-immunity is likely due to misinformation about the MMR vaccine.

Due to autism being more often diagnosed in young male children, it is believed that a cohort of now young men were not vaccinated due to decisions of parents that were informed by “erroneous science” that has since been discredited.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Justice Minister Helen McEntee updated Cabinet on the future role of the gardaí in public prosecutions.

The Commission on the Future of Policing recommended that all prosecution decisions should be removed from gardaí, alongside a recommendation for police to cease prosecuting cases in court.

However, a High-Level Review Group (HLRG), established to examine the recommendations, calls for gardaí to retain their role in court prosecutions with additional support from the office of the DPP.

The report of the HLRG, due to be published shortly, calls for gardaí to continue to prosecute low-level but high-volume offences on behalf of the DPP.

It also calls for a divisional court management office structure to be set up across all Garda divisions, to reduce the administrative work of gardaí seeing prosecutions through to completion.

As part of the proposals, a summary prosecution reform steering committee will be established to be responsible for the planning and monitoring of the implementation of this new policing model.

Ms McEntee also received Government approval to draft new legislation to assist gardaí in tackling crime online.

This new legislation would provide gardaí with up-to-date powers to access criminal evidence in digital formats.