Up to 30,000 girls in first year in secondary school are to be offered a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), which is passed on through sexual contact, from later this year, Minister for Health Mary Harney has announced.

However, experts say that such a scheme needs to be accompanied by an information campaign to explain that HPV can be entirely avoided by abstaining from sex, or by sticking with one partner who doesn’t have the virus.

Miriam Grossman, a US psychiatrist who is an expert in sexual behaviour, says mandatory campaigns to promote the vaccine presented cervical cancer are carried out “as if as if it [the cancer] is unrelated to one’s sexual behavior”.

The Government faced strong criticism in 2008 after it announced that the plan to provide the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) to girls to protect against cervical cancer was being shelved because of financial constraints.

Ms Harney said yesterday that following talks with pharmaceutical companies the cost of the vaccination programme had been “slashed”.

The Minister said that she envisaged that the vaccine would be administered by public health doctors and nurses who are employed by the HSE.

The adminstration of the vaccine to girls will be subject to parental consent.

However questions have been raised about the vaccine itself, in terms of how long those who are vaccinated remain immune from HPV, whether there are any adverse effects from the vaccine and the chance that vaccinated girls and women will have a false sense of security, leading them to increase their number of sexual contacts and perhaps to miss yearly PAP screens, Dr Grossman says.