Parents of autistic children have called for the scrapping of an Oireachtas committee report which found no evidence of a proved link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Their plea, made yesterday, was backed by a member of the committee, Mr John Gormley TD, who said many of the concerns raised during the committee's public hearings had not been adequately addressed in the report.
"In particular the continued rise in autism rates and its causes - one of the main reasons why the committee undertook this work - has not been properly examined," he said. "I put down over 20 amendments to the report but the bulk of them were rejected."
The report from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children was published at the end of last month. Dealing with vaccinations, its findings followed several public meetings at which submissions were made by medical experts, the Department of Health, and concerned parents. Parents had alleged there was a link between the MMR vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella and the onset of autism.
Ms Kathryn Sinnott - who is considering her options following the recent Supreme Court ruling that the State was not obliged to provide education for her autistic son, Jamie, because he was over 18 - said parents had turned to the committee in desperation and had been betrayed.
"Worse still the whole slow committee process has wasted almost two more years - years in which several hundred more children have become autistic and several thousand have developed other autistic spectrum disorders," she told a press conference in Dublin.
She said parents had asked the committee to come to the scene of the "autistic disaster" and do two things: urgently help the victims and investigate the causes to prevent further "disasters". They had been let down.
Mr Gormley said the overwhelming feeling during the committee's deliberations on the submissions, which were in private, was that they did not want to scare people. He regretted, he said, having agreed to the private sessions as the minutes of the meetings were not now available, even under the Freedom of Information Act.
He is to ask for a Dail debate on the report so that its "shortcomings" can be examined.
Ms Caroline McCabe of the Hope Project, which provides information to parents of disabled and autistic children, said the report reflected only the testimony of the medical and pharmaceutical organisations, health boards and the Department of Health. "Testimony given by parents and researchers was totally ignored by the committee in formulating the report and its recommendations," she claimed.
"This report is an insult to parents. We demand that it be scrapped. In the face of a raging autism epidemic we do not want another time-wasting report. We want action," she said.
She said that as a first step the Government should adhere to manufacturers' guidelines in the administration of vaccines. She claimed manufacturers advised that the MMR vaccine should not be given before a child was 15 months old but it was being given in the Republic at 12 months or earlier.
A Department spokeswoman said it adhered to the manufacturers' 15-month guideline but in the case of a disease outbreak, such as the measles epidemic last year, children were vaccinated earlier and this was also in accordance with procedures during outbreaks.