The submission was made by lawyers for GSK Biological in a case taken by a now 26-year-old woman who says she developed narcolepsy from the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine.
Ms Bennett of Lakelands, Naas, in Co Kildare, has sued the Minister, the HSE, the producer of the vaccine, Glaxo Smith Kline Biologicals and the Health Products Regulatory Authority. He said the Pandemrix vaccine was designed and manufactured in emergency circumstances in response to a swine flu pandemic declared by the World Health Organisation.
He said he would produce "powerful evidence" in this case that the level of safety of the product was that which a person was generally entitled to expect and that Pandemrix was not a defective product. He said the core of the plaintiff's case was not that the product was defective in design or manufacture, but that she was not given the patient information leaflet.
He also said the claims that the indemnity clauses in the HSE's contract with GSK somehow controlled how the State would conduct its cases was "completely and utterly wrong". None of the clauses in the contract was inappropriate and all were unremarkable, he said.
Official study confirming the link