As clear as mud! SF candidate still won’t clear up the HPV jab question

Candidate’s latest radio interview adds to jab confusion

SINN Féin’s Presidential hopeful Liadh Ní Riada came under further pressure yesterday over her account of her refusal to give permission for her daughter to get the life-saving HPV vaccine.

In a 2016 interview on Cork’s 96FM, the Sinn Féin MEP said she’d received a leaflet from the HSE asking for permission for her daughter to get the vaccine.

Despite signing the form, Ms Ní Riada told the interviewer that she subsequently wrote a post on her ‘personal’ Facebook page outlining her concerns with the vaccine, after which she said a ‘whole load of people’ wrote to her outlining their own concerns.

As a result, she explained, she then ‘sent a note into school’ with her daughter stating that she ‘didn’t want her get the vaccine’.

But yesterday, when questioned on RTÉ Radio 1’s Presidential debate about why she had written to her school objecting to her daughter getting the vaccine, Ms Ní Riada insisted that she had never written to the school.

‘I didn’t write to their school at all, I don’t know where you are getting your information from,’ she said.

Asked last night by the Irish Daily Mail to explain why she was claiming she hadn’t written to the school when she had told Cork’s 96FM that she had sent a ‘note’ to the school, a spokesperson issued a brief statement on her behalf. It wrongly claimed that RTÉ interviewer Áine Lawlor had suggested to Ms Ní Riada that she had written a letter to the school.

The statement said: ‘Today on RTÉ, I was asked if I had written a letter to my daughter’s school in 2016 in relation to the HPV vaccine. I did not. In 2016, like many parents, I received a note from the school seeking permission for her to have the vaccine. Like any parent, I returned that note. I never wrote a letter to the school about this issue.’

Ms Lawlor had never made any reference to a letter but put it to Ms Ní Riada that she had written to the school.

During the 2016 interview on Cork’s 96FM, Ms Ní Riada said she was had writing on her ‘personal’ Facebook page when she posted her concerns about the vaccine ignoring her influential position as an MEP for Ireland South.

Yesterday, despite insisting she is ‘completely in favour of the HPV vaccine’ and that it’s a ‘no-brainer’, Ms Ní Riada again refused to answer whether she has rescinded her refusal two years ago to allow her daughters to get the vaccine.

She insisted that she never ‘opposed the vaccine’ and was ‘always in favour of it’ but simply ‘raised concerns about the lack of information’.

Ms Lawlor said to Ms Ní Riada that the issue of cervical cancer has been highlighted recently, with campaigners such as Vicky Phelan encouraging politicians all over the country to back screening.

She asked her during the debate yesterday on the News At One: ‘You are saying publicly you back screening, is your family living that backing for the HPV vaccine, and should people not know that about you as a Presidential contender?’

She responded: ‘As I said, I am fully in favour of the vaccine and I fully support and endorse, and I think it is very brave what Vicky Phelan and Emma Mhic Mhathúna have done.

‘I have seen cancer up close myself so anybody that can promote a vaccine to prevent such horrendous ravages on anybody has to be supported and promoted.’

Despite having volunteered the story of not giving permission for her daughter to get the vaccine on Facebook and on Cork’s 96FM Ms Ní Riada said she felt it was unfair to be asked questions about her daughters’ health.

‘However, I don’t think it is fair that journalists and others like them, there’s almost a sinister element that they’re looking and hounding my children’s private medical records, they are private, they are underage, there is data protection. And I think any parent in this country would be in agreement of that, that they would say our children’s medical records are sacred, they are right to their privacy.’

After the debate, Ms Ní Riada insisted she was not uncomfortable with the issue but that she is ‘uncomfortable talking about my children’s private medical records’.

She admitted she may have been ‘naïve’ to initially post about it on Facebook in 2016.

‘The radio rang me to go on as a parent, and I suppose lesson No.1 as a MEP newly-elected, I should have said “No”.

‘But I went on as a parent and I was simply raising concerns, I wasn’t saying “I am not going to give it to them”,’ she said.

‘I was simply saying I didn’t have enough information within the time-frame to make that decision that you had to make within 24 hours.

‘So that’s all I was raising. And I have since said, I am completely in favour of the HPV vaccine, it’s a no-brainer, it saves life.’

She said her teenagers ‘are at this stage’ saying: “Mom for God’s sake would you stop dragging us into this conversation,” and I have to respect that.’

emmajane.hade@dailymail.ie

‘I have seen cancer up close myself’ ‘I was simply raising concerns’