TODAY, ALMOST 13 years after their son Alan died, Vera and Kevin Duffy will attend what is expected to be the conclusion of the inquest into his death.
Alan Duffy was 22-years-old when he died at the Mater hospital on December 31, 1995, after contracting pneumonia. His family claim the pneumonia was due to Alan's severe mental handicap, which they maintain was caused by a reaction to the three-in-one vaccine he received as a baby between 1973 and 1974.
An inquest was opened at the Dublin City Coroner's Court following his death and the Northern Area Health Board subsequently went to the High Court to challenge Dr Brian Farrell's decision to investigate the role, if any, the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine may have had in Alan's death.
In December 1999, the High Court upheld that challenge, ruling that any link between his death and the vaccine was too indistinct to make it appropriate for investigation by a coroner.
Two years later the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Dublin city coroner against the decision.
The Duffy family, from Howth Road, Clontarf still want answers.
"The best we can hope for is an open verdict, which will be shocking. It's 12½ years of our lives," says Vera.
When Alan, the couple's second child and first son, was born at Mount Carmel Hospital on May 11th, 1973, he was a healthy baby boy who "had the best of everything".
But after receiving the first three-in-one injection at five months Alan became unwell.
"He was grey. His eyes were rolling. His arms were jerking out. He used to scream this high pitched screech. It was like he had a temper. He had projectile vomiting. I had no idea what was going on," says Vera.
She didn't want him to have the second injection but her doctor advised he'd be a lot worse off if he didn't get it and afterwards Alan had the same disturbing reaction, but this time more frequently.
"We had no idea. I was 25. This was doctors and medicine.
"It was what you did."
A developmental check around eight months (after the second injection), by the district nurse found a huge deterioration in the previously healthy baby boy, who was now rolling all over the place and had to be propped up with pillows, as did a second examination by a paediatrician around the same time, where Alan had no reflexes and couldn't balance himself.
After the third injection at nine months Alan went into convulsions and, "from there on in he was completely destroyed. He was gone from me from there on," says Vera. "He never knew me. He never kicked a ball, never said a word, never did anything."
Vera and Kevin attended doctors and specialists in an effort to find some explanations but felt they were getting none.
In a phone call to the Department of Health, Vera told an official she had received a card to get her son vaccinated and was concerned as she had read it could cause brain damage and convulsions and asked him was that possible.
"He said the advantages so outweighed the risks I'd be very foolish not to do it. He said it was possible, but very rare - it was one in a million. My answer to him was well, 'you're probably talking to the mother of one in a million because that's what I believe happened to my son.' That's when I knew it was possible. I said let's go public because there has to be more than him."
Aged 10 months, doctors told the couple their baby boy was mentally retarded and that his future lay with St Michael's Home, a facility for children with intellectual disabilities.
Vera looked after Alan at home until he was 12 and she was no longer able to cope. "It got to the stage where I couldn't lift him. One time I was lifting him up the stairs and he had a convulsion and broke my nose. I always said to Kevin he'd never leave my care."
Vera founded the Irish Association for Vaccine Damaged Children in the mid-1970s and the letters poured in from parents who believed their children had been adversely affected by vaccinations.
By the time he died, Alan, who was confined to a wheelchair, was little more than skin and bone.
It's the memory of "looking at your child wasting away to a skeleton" and "the pain he endured" that makes Vera relentless in her pursuit of the truth - to know the reason behind why her son was healthy at five months and severely brain-damaged five months later.
Almost 35 years later the couple still have no answers. "People say to me 'what keeps you going?' I have to close my eyes and remember what Alan looked like when we buried him and what he went through.
"I owe it to him and I owe it to his brothers and sisters. I'm not going to give up. I'm never going to stop. We're seeking the truth by whatever means possible."
A spokeswoman for the HSE said the organisation does not comment on individual cases.