asked the Minister for Health the number of parents entitled to seek payment of the ex gratia sum of £10,000 as a result of their child being adjudged to have suffered damage as a result of the administering of whooping cough vaccine who have taken such payments.

12.

asked the Minister for Health the number of new cases which have come before the independent medical group in respect of alleged damage suffered by children as a result of whooping cough vaccine since the group's report was furnished to him in June 1982; the present ages of such children; the year in which such children were vaccinated for whooping cough; the number of these children vaccinated after 1975; whether he has received any further report from the medical group since June 1982 either in relation to these new cases or in relation to any of the cases dealt with by them in their 1982 report.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 11 and 12 together.

Four sets of parents have accepted the ex gratia payments offered. A total of 38 additional applications has been submitted for consideration by the Expert Medical Group since the announcement of the group's findings in July 1982. The ages of the applicants and the years of vaccination, where known, are set out on a table which I propose to circulate in the Official Report. It will be seen that the number of these vaccinated after 1975 is 3. A report on one applicant has yet to be submitted by the expert group and, as soon as this has been received, I will communicate the findings to each parent in respect of their child.

The chairman of the group discussed the reports with the parents of a number of persons who were examined prior to July 1982. As a result of these discussions, the group re-examined some of the reports, the results of which re-examinations were communicated by the chairman of the group to the parents concerned.

Following is the table referred to.

Will the Minister indicate why only four sets of parents out of the 14 whose children were judged to have been affected by whooping cough vaccine in the June 1982 report have accepted the ex gratia payments? Why have the other 10 groups not done so?

The matter has been closed by the Department pending fresh information. On 4 November 1982 the then Government decided to offer payment of £10,000 on an ex gratia basis in respect of the 14 persons whose disabilities the expert group on whooping cough vaccination considered could be attributable with reasonable probability to the vaccination. Only four have decided to accept the offer of payment. It is entirely a matter for the parents concerned and I would be precluded from commenting on the reasons they did not accept.

Would the Minister not accept that the principal reason the other parents have not accepted is due to the restrictive nature of the conditions to which they must agree in order to accept payment? These conditions are considerably more restrictive than those applicable under a similar scheme operating in the United Kingdom, exclusive of Northern Ireland.

I have examined the matter with great care. Whereas I may have been critical of my predecessor on many aspects of the work done on the portfolio, I completely concur with the work done by him in this area and the offers made. Our Department, more than that in any other European country or any state in America, have spent an enormous amount of time and devoted a considerable amount of work to this area and I do not think the 14 claimants concerned and the other persons seeking inclusion in the scheme have anything to complain about. I have a very strong view on that. Many of the records concerned are confidential to the expert group and to my Department and I am precluded from commenting on individual cases.

Would the Minister indicate when he expects to receive the final report from the independent medical group in relation to the 38 additional applicants? Would he confirm that the results of that report will be made publicly available, whilst ensuring the anonymity of the parents and children concerned?

I have always been in a position to allude to the general findings of the group. I strongly hold the view that in the interests of medical confidentiality and of the persons directly concerned it would not be in the public interest to publish the report. That is a view which my predecessor formulated and I fully concur.

Will the Minister agree that the general nature of the report will be made available, as in the case of the report of June 1982? If the independent medical group adjudge that some of the children they are investigating have suffered brain damage as a result of the administration of whooping cough vaccine, will the Minister confirm that the existing ex gratia scheme will be made available to the parents of those children and will not be confined to the 54 cases originally dealt with in the 1972 report?

That would be examined but I cannot give any commitment at this stage.