HRB Review Promised after Sinn Fein Bill to Ban Fluorides failed

Posted on Nov 9 2013 - 4:54pm by Shan Kelly for  www.the Journalist.ie

Health Minister James Reilly  ordered the Health Service Executive to ask  a Government agency to review whether compulsory water fluoridation should be ended, after a Sinn Féin bill to outlaw water fluoridation in Ireland  attracted cross party support from TDs on the left. 

With a vote  on the Sinn Fein bill due  on 12th November, the Government  announced a U Turn  after independent TDs  and some from his own party, backed the Sinn Fein Bill in the Dail.
Ireland is  now one of just two countries in the world which still has a national policy compelling water fluoridation, so ending the mandatory  policy would  not be  a radical move.

Most European countries have banned it (like the Netherlands), or abandoned it, after scientific studies identified it as a high risk activity which can affect the brain and bone development of young children.

One political party that has no doubt about the effects of fluorides is Sinn Féin. The party’s Environmental Spokesman is Louth TD Brian Stanley, whose mother died from a thyroid illness.  Stanley knows that Fluorides in water impair the thyroid gland’s ability to absorb the iodine it needs to make thyroid hormones, a fact reported by the  US National Research Council in 2006, which caused it to label fluorides as "endocrine disrupters". Campaigners link rising rates of thyroid illness across the world to water fluoridation.

Stanley‘s bill would have made water fluoridation in the Republic a criminal offence.

 Forced water Fluoridation began in Ireland in 1964, after Gladys Ryan, a Dublin Mother-of-five, lost a six-week Supreme Court battle to prevent it. Gladys was represented in court by Civil Rights lawyer Sean McBride and by former Fine Gael Minister Richie Ryan.

Campaigners believe the health benefits of ending fluoridation here would be enormous. Banning fluoridation would also save us money -a minimum of 4.5M Euro per annum. This could be used to upgrade Ireland’s creaking Victorian water supply system. Problems with Dublin’s water recently resulted in a million people being cut off and unable to flush the loo or brush their teeth between 8pm and 8am for almost a week.

The brave women from across Ireland who posed for The Naked Fluoride Calendar 2014 did so to end Ireland’s 50-year-old policy of mandatory water fluoridation, which studies have linked to higher rates of bone cancer, osteoporosis and thyroid illness. The Calendar Girls  joined their ringleader, nutritionist Aisling Fitzgibbon, 27, from Kerry, at the White Lady art gallery on Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Quay, to launch the 2014 Calendar and party with DJs and journalists from Hot Press, the music magazine which has supported the campaign.

Fine Gael’s Ivan Yates promised the party would end water fluoridation if it was re-elected, way back in 2001.

 The www.HRB.ie Review of the health impacts of water fluoridation at current levels  is expected in December 2014.

The Naked Fluoride Calendar 2014 is on sale for 9.99 euro from www.thegirlagainstfluoriode.com