{"id":660118,"date":"2026-10-20T07:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T07:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/660118\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T07:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T07:22:15","slug":"celebrating-30-years-of-the-immunisation-guidelines-for-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/660118\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating 30 years of the Immunisation Guidelines for Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

NIAC\u2019s role as a single source of trustworthy evidence-based advice has grown more significant as the immunisation landscape has continued to evolve and brought new vaccines with it, writes Dr Edina Moylett, Chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee<\/p>\n

Over the last 30 years, the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) has played a key role in shaping Ireland\u2019s immunisation policy by providing independent recommendations and advice to the Minister for Health. A core part of this work is the development and maintenance of the Immunisation Guidelines for Ireland, which provide up-to-date and accurate information about vaccines and immunisation for healthcare professionals.<\/p>\n

Since they were first published in 1996, the guidelines have grown from the original 16 to 26 chapters, covering a range of vaccine-preventable diseases from influenza and HPV to rabies and meningitis. Last year, they were downloaded 30,000 times, while NIAC also addressed close to 100 queries from healthcare professionals. In the last five years alone, NIAC has issued 80 recommendations to the Minister for Health.<\/p>\n

As the volume of work continues to grow, constant monitoring of new vaccines, national infection rates and international outbreaks ensures that the most pressing recommendations and guideline updates come first.<\/p>\n

The history of vaccine programmes in Ireland, however, starts before the guidelines were ever written, dating back to 1949 with the universal BCG infant vaccine campaign. Over subsequent decades, vaccine campaigns for DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), polio, and rubella were successfully run, until vaccine uptake started to fall in the late 1970s and early 1980s as public concerns around the safety of the whole-cell pertussis vaccine grew.<\/p>\n

The need for a trusted source of reliable information about vaccines was recognised, and in 1987, the Faculty of Paediatrics and Public Health in the Royal College of Physicians Ireland (RCPI) wrote to the President of RCPI to recommend the establishment of a vaccination and immunisation committee.<\/p>\n

In 1998, NIAC was officially established as a standing committee of the RCPI with the purpose of providing expert recommendations and advice on all areas of immunisation. From the outset, NIAC sought not only to provide a reliable source of trusted information on immunisation in Ireland for healthcare workers, but also to make reliable information on vaccines publicly available for anyone interested, something that is becoming increasingly important today at a time of increased vaccine hesitancy.<\/p>\n

NIAC\u2019s role as a single source of trustworthy evidence-based advice has grown more significant as the immunisation landscape has continued to evolve and brought new vaccines with it, like RSV and COVID-19. NIAC occupies a key position in Ireland\u2019s robust immunisation decision pathway, a long-established process beginning with research and development by pharmaceutical companies, followed by regulatory approval by the European Medicines Agency at a European level and the Health Products Regulatory Authority in Ireland.<\/p>\n

The next step in the process is NIAC\u2019s recommendations, which are developed using the Evidence to Recommendation Framework recommended by the World Health Organization for national immunisation technical advisory groups globally.<\/p>\n

These recommendations are developed and issued by NIAC, which is entirely voluntary and is comprised of a Chair, Deputy Chair and members nominated by the RCPI, Royal College of Surgeons, Irish College of General Practitioners and National Virus Reference Laboratory, among others. Until recently, all of NIAC\u2019s work was carried out by committed volunteers, but during the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, a secretariat was developed to support NIAC\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Following NIAC\u2019s move from the RCPI to become a statutory function of HIQA in March 2025, this team expanded to meet the ongoing demands for up-to-date information on immunisation, and is now made up of a team of clinicians and researchers located within HIQA\u2019s Health Technology Assessment Directorate, who provide evidence synthesis, clinical and administrative support to NIAC.<\/p>\n

Once the committee has agreed on the recommendations, they are included as part of the relevant chapter of the guidelines along with the disease epidemiology, effects, diagnosis and treatments, and vaccine-specific information including recommendations on doses, administration and adverse reactions.<\/p>\n

Although the primary target audience for the guidelines continue to be healthcare workers, NIAC remains committed to its goal of making the information available to everyone, and the next step in this journey will be to move from online PDFs to fully web-based guidelines in the coming years, allowing more people to see the key information at a glance.<\/p>\n

To support this transition, NIAC is currently seeking feedback from users of the guidelines along with members of the public. Take part in the survey by the end of October and share your views on making NIAC\u2019s expertise more user-friendly and accessible to all: NIAC Website Survey<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NIAC\u2019s role as a single source of trustworthy evidence-based advice has grown more significant as the immunisation landscape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,161544,279466,60,279467,63723,11987],"class_list":["post-660118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-immunisation","tag-immunisation-guidelines-for-ireland","tag-ireland","tag-niac","tag-vaccination","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}