Mary Henry (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for accepting my amendment to amendment No. 12. Although this is an important section, it will be difficult to implement. It is probably advisable that a quorum of the board consists of five and that its committees may include members other than members of the board. The reason I take this view relates to my efforts to try to keep up to date with medical research. A few years ago, Dr. Mary Angel, the then editor of a journal about which I am particularly enthusiastic, the New England Journal of Medicine, introduced a policy by which the findings of drug trials would not be published if anyone involved in them had a beneficial interest in the drug under examination. However, after about two years the journal found it impossible to keep to its policy because so many people had some involvement with the companies which owned the drugs under examination. Science Foundation Ireland will have considerable difficulty in ensuring that the people involved on the fringes – employees and so forth – or connected relatives do not have a beneficial ownership in companies, particularly as so many people own shares.

The Bill states that small amounts of money or distant connections to companies, for example, through a pension fund, which could not be regarded as influencing the decision of a person, are acceptable. While I accept the need for this section, I do not underestimate the problems people will encounter in trying to avoid falling foul of it. In the past, Harvard researchers could not own more than $50 dollars of stock in a product or drug on which they were undertaking research. Right or wrong, this threshold was increased. One has to be concerned by the possibility that people will be influenced by personal investments they hold in companies manufacturing a device, drug, or development which they are examining. This is a difficult area.

I welcome the decision to accept my amendment. I am slightly concerned, however, by the use of the word "sibling" in the definition of "connected relative". I recall a similar discussion on family connections during the debate on a Bill being taken by the previous Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Deputy Dempsey, which did not include the word "sibling" in its definition of connected relative. The Minister pointed out it would be impossible for him to know about everything in which his ten siblings were involved. It could easily arise that a person's siblings are involved in enterprises without that person's knowledge.