Irish Doctor Who Warned Parents Against Vaxxing Kids Faces 10 Charges of Professional Misconduct

On Thursday, the inquiry heard evidence from expert witnesses commissioned by the medical council: Dr Diarmuid Quinlan of the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) and Prof Colin Bradley, head of family medicine at the RCSI UCD Malaysia campus.

Dr Quinlan, ICGP medical director, said the Covid-19 pandemic was “a time of enormous fear in the medical community”.

Dr de Brun was appointed to the Irish Medical Council in 2018 by then minister for health Simon Harris, but resigned in April 2020 over what he described as failures to protect nursing home residents earlier in the pandemic.

Addressing this matter, Dr Quinlan said individuals in nursing homes were “especially vulnerable to the ravages of Covid” and that decisions on the movement of patients were made on a “case-by-case basis”.

“I certainly don’t feel that GPs in any way were not delivering high-quality care right across the pandemic,” he added.

The inquiry heard that Dr de Brun was critical of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), describing them on social media as a “threat to public health” and expressing disagreement with the use of vaccines against the virus in children and healthy young people.

According to the medical council, the comments, which were posted between May 2020 and October 2021, were “inappropriate and/or undermined public health guidelines and/or public health authorities”.

On this point, Dr Bradley said “most people, including those from Nphet, would probably recognise” that decisions to discharge people from hospitals to nursing homes had been “a misstep in the early days of the pandemic”.

In his report, Dr Bradley noted that Dr de Brun was critical of “virtually every aspect of the State’s response to the pandemic”.

While Dr de Brun had added a disclaimer to his Twitter bio that the views he expressed on the platform were personal and did not reflect those of a medical professional, Dr Bradley said this was not sufficient and that “doctors need to take great care of what they say in public, because the public puts a lot of weight on it”.

In giving evidence, Dr Bradley said that Dr de Brun “set a bad example” at the anti-mask rally in 2020 and concluded that he believed the allegations levelled against the GP cumulatively amounted to professional misconduct.

The inquiry will resume on Friday morning.