THE IRISH Council for Bioethics is to close at the end of this month after a decision by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment to terminate its funding.
Its director, Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan, said the move was a retrograde step that would leave Ireland as the only EU country without an independent oversight body for bioethics.
“We are to be defunded at the end of the month,” she said.
“You would really want to question the wisdom of shutting down such a body in light of the Supreme Court ruling this week,” she added, in a reference to Tuesday’s ruling on access to three frozen embryos.
The fact that Ireland does not have good regulatory controls on bioethical issues could hurt foreign investment in high-tech medical areas, Dr O’Sullivan said.
“No body will want to invest if there is no governance system. People do not want to invest without regulatory control and there is no regulation in this area.”
The Supreme Court in its judgment this week found the failure to legislate in the area of fertility treatment as “disturbing”.
Dr O’Sullivan added: “We will be the only country without a council for bioethics.”
Last April the department indicated to the group led by economist Colm McCarthy that savings could be achieved if the council was closed. The McCarthy report subsequently accepted that view in its report.
The council’s 2009 budget of €365,000 maintains a small secretariat and funds printing of its reports. Its board operates on a voluntary basis and includes some of the country’s leading bioethicists. It is chaired by Dr Dolores Dooley and its two vice-chairs are Dr Peter McKenna of the Rotunda Hospital and Mr Asim Sheikh, an expert in forensic and legal medicine at UCD.
The council’s board received a written decision from the department on December 3rd indicating that funding would end on December 31st.
The Irish Council for Bioethics was established in 2002 as an independent body to consider the ethical issues arising from developments in science and medicine. The Royal Irish Academy originally set up the body after a request from the department.
Its most recent report, Biometrics: Enhancing Security or Invading Privacy?, was published on November 4th. In 2008 the council published a seminal report: Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues Concerning Stem Cell Research.
It has also dealt with other controversial issues including the use of human biological material and genetically modified organisms.
The decision was criticised by ethicists including UCC lecturer and author of Medicine, Ethics and the Law, Dr Deirdre Madden. “In my opinion it is an ill-thought out, retrograde step and very short-sighted in terms of some of the ethical issues that will undoubtedly be facing Ireland in the coming years.” The board’s chair Dr Dooley, who lectured in ethics at UCC for 30 years, expressed her regrets. “The Government is going to be at a terrible loss. It will be an unfortunate loss of expertise.”
“The moral, legal and ethical issues are not going to go away,” said vice-chair Mr Sheikh.
The Irish Stem Cell Foundation expressed its regret, saying: “Given the legislative challenges facing the Oireachtas after the recent court ruling surrounding IVF embryos and the rights of sperm donors, it seems shortsighted to do this.”