The joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children will decide next week who should address it on childhood vaccinations.
The committee plans to look at childhood vaccination in response to public concern about the risks. In particular, it will consider reports of a possible link between the MMR or three-in-one vaccination and the onset of autism. It will also examine vaccination policy and practices and the poor take-up rates which led to the recent measles outbreak.
The committee invited written submissions from the public, the medical profession and other interested parties in July. Over 80 submissions were received.
The process of examining the submissions has begun and some of those who made them will be asked to make presentations to the committee.
Committee chairman Mr Batt O'Keeffe TD said a number of the submissions covered common ground and the whips of all parties on the committee were drawing up a list of people who should be called to make presentations. The whips will report back to an Oireachtas committee meeting on Thursday when the list of witnesses will be approved. Independent experts may also be called, he said.
"Obviously there is no way we can receive all those who made submissions," Mr O'Keeffe said.
Many submissions came from individual parents and parents' umbrella groups, the Department of Health, health boards, the National Disease Surveillance Centre, the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organisation and a health agency in New South Wales.
Mr O'Keeffe said it was possible a sub-committee would hear the submissions in a manner similar to the way a sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee dealt with the DIRT inquiry.
"We realise there has been a very slow take-up in immunisation and we know there are concerns out there among parents on the issue. In an effort to address these issues we will bring all sides of the debate into the public domain in a bid at the end of the day to make a recommendation, or note to the Dail the odds for and against vaccination. We felt this issue was never really comprehensively addressed before and that it was due time it was," Mr O'Keeffe said.
"We are going in with a totally open mind. There are very strongly held beliefs on both sides. We may or may not make recommendations, depending on the evidence received," he added.