Verdict: "I make No Apologies for Being Guided by my Conscience"

IMC committee found De Brun guilty of professional misconduct

Jun 04, 2026

Criticism of public health guidelines that isolated elderly patients and left others without treatment, has earned Marcus de Brun a ‘guilty’ verdict from the Irish Medical Council.

The finding does not bode well for the future of Irish medicine nor the general public.

The fitness to practise committee of the IMC returned its guilty verdict today, relating to de Brun’s outspoken criticism of covid policies introduced in 2020 and 2021.

Sanctions attached to the guilty verdict will be decided at a later date.

In his submission at the Talbot Hotel this morning, De Brun made a series of sobering points, offering a summation of the past six years from his perspective.

I have set out his submission in full below.

At the end of the submission, readers can find a chronological list of stories tracking the GP’s case from May 2025 through to his most recent appearance before the IMC committee in February 2026.

At the inquiry today, Marcus de Brun started on the topic of care of the elderly in nursing homes, which caused him to resign from the IMC in April 2020.

He said:

“In February 2020, I had my own GP practice in north Dublin. I was also responsible for the care of a nursing home with some 50 elderly residents. In February and March of 2020, although I followed HSE guidelines, and those issued to me by the Irish College of General Practice, many elderly residents at my nursing home began to die at an alarming rate, and I cared for them as they died.
I broke the news to family members, many of whom stood outside in the rain and the cold and observed what was unfolding through the windows, because they couldn’t get in to see their family members.
And I was responsible, I was the agent of the State who was to exercise these policies, and many of these policies were wrong, fundamentally wrong, but I adhered to themand I followed them.
At the time I was a member of the Irish Medical Council. And throughout my medical career, I have always respected the public health guidance and the Medical Council, and I believed that institutions like the Medical Council were here for the public good, that they’re recommendations and guidelines exist to protect patients and promote public health. That’s what I believed, and that’s why I followed the guidelines at my nursing home, and my patients were dying.
In February 2020, the guidance I was issued in respect of my nursing home residents instructed me not to test them for Covid-19. And indeed if I requested a test from the HSE, I was told that if they had symptoms, I was to presume that everybody had Covid-19, and I wasn’t allowed to test patients, because a wave of Covid was expected in the hospital sector and in the general public and tests were not to be wasted on nursing home residents, they had to be preserved for members of the public. Well, I knew that policy was wrong, because we were testing people who weren’t vulnerable, it was the elderly who were vulnerable.
I was instructed by the HSE that if one resident at my facility had Covid-19 that no more testing would be provided, and I was to assume that they all had it, and testing was the only manner that I had to isolate the vulnerable, to protect the vulnerable within the care home facility, but that was pulled in February of 2020.
In March and February, these policies were instituted in anticipation of a wave that never arrived, and in March of that year some 15 patients were transferred from the hospital, from Beaumont Hospital over the course of a weekend were transferred into my nursing home. And I arrived for work on Monday morning to do a ward round at the nursing home, and I was informed by nursing staff that there were some 12 or 15 patients there from Beaumont Hospital that nobody told me about, nobody negotiated.
And what’s more, they hadn’t even been tested.
And when I called the HSE to request testing, again I was told to assume that they all had it, or organise testing myself. This was the regard that was given to the vulnerable people in our society. These were the guidelines that I was following, I was adhering to, because I had faith, I had faith in the medical establishment, I had faith in the HSE, and I had faith in the Medical Council, which I was a member of. I had faith in the regulatory authority, so I followed those guidelines.
I was advised by my colleagues at the Irish College of General Practice to contact family members of the elderly nursing home residents under my care, and to encourage them to sign “do not resuscitate orders”, so that their elderly relatives might not be transferred to the hospital and become a burden. I repeat “a burden”. That’s what my patients were. That’s what the elderly in the nursing home sector in Ireland were, they were a burden.
End of Life Care
The only treatment that I was advised to give those elderly residents who were dying was end-of-life care, midazolam for sedation and palliation, whilst at the same time, at the same time in the hospitals, my colleagues were instructed, the consultants were instructed to treat patients with steroids and anti-inflammatories and antibiotics andhydroxychloroquine, all of this I made abundantly clear through my hearing, and it is on the record for this Committee.
But no treatments were encouraged or permitted within the community setting where nursing home patients, nursing home residents reside. We were not even encouraged to administer vitamin D, not even natural sunlight, because they were locked indoors. Why is that? These were the questions, this was the question, these were some of the questions that motivated my so-called inappropriate comments in respect of the pandemic.
Why were they deprived of treatments available to patients in the hospital? Why were they simply sedated and allowed to die? Why was there an orchestrated campaign against treatments for Covid-19 in the community? The very place where those treatments mattered the most, where they would have had the greatest benefit, where even through the benefit of the placebo effect they could and would have given families hope, hope, the single most important ingredient to any therapy in times of great pain and suffering, why were they even deprived of hope?
Well, the answer is simple, and it is on the record for this Committee, and it is on the record for this hearing. The Covid vaccine was granted. Emergency use authorisation by the European Medicines Agency on the condition that no treatments were available in the community. I repeat that no treatments were available in the community.
So what was I to think? Not just as a physician, not just as GP caring for nursing homes, so what was I to think? How was I to respond?
Treatments Withheld

Somewhere in the region of 2,000 elderly residents died in Irish nursing homes. Ireland had the second highest number of nursing home fatalities in the world, second to Canada. Many of those elderly patients may have simply had the flu, and yet because of financial incentives they were labelled as Covid patients, they were deprived of treatments, deprived of human contact, deprived of the love and the warmth and the affection that the vast majority of nursing home residents depend upon like oxygen. And more importantly, they were deprived of hope. And the evidence for that atrocity is in this hearing and has been put before the Committee.
When the then President of the Irish Medical Council was asked during this hearing to explain why the elderly were being deprived, or what was her opinion that the elderly residents were being deprived of therapeutics that were being made available at the time to patients in the hospital? She replied, and I quote: “Sometimes not everybody can have what they want when they want it.”

Former IMC president admits 'everybody was denied' treatment for covid

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Throughout this hearing I have been accused of inappropriate statements, inappropriate comments, inappropriate emotion, perhaps, or an inappropriate place where I made those comments. But is the Committee not remotely cognisant of the inappropriate content of what has happened throughout this hearing, throughout my hearing of what was said?
Let me repeat:
“Sometimes not everybody can have what they want when they want it.”
Tell that to the families of the 2,000 nursing home residents who died in this country and ask any of them do they find that inappropriate? Neither the question put to former President, Rita Doyle, nor the reply itself were printed anywhere in the media, but those words are recorded in the minutes of this hearing.
In April 2020, when I wrote to Minister Simon Harris, as a consequence of what was going on in my nursing home, and I tendered my resignation from the Irish Medical Council, I informed him of what was occurring in the nursing homes. I wrote to President Doyle.
This Committee has talked about an exchange between myself and President Doyle. I hope this Committee is cognisant of the full record of that exchange. And I hope this Committee is cognisant of my resignation letter and the matters raised in my resignation letter.

I wrote to President Doyle and informed her of what was happening in the nursing homes, of the suffering and unnecessary death; my words were ignored. They weren’t actioned. They weren’t escalated. They didn’t form the basis of any inquiry by the Medical Council. And I was talking about people who were dying. And we are here today and this entire hearing is constructed on the basis of inappropriate tweets, or that Twitter is not the right place to discuss these things, even though there were no other places available to discuss things, because we weren’t listened to, we were pushed out, ignored, vilified.
Why is it that my complaints to the then President of the Medical Council weren’t escalated? Would I be here today if I had have been listened to? I don’t think so.
Ignored
Despite complaints from the public, from myself and several of my colleagues, they ignored us. They ignored those who were suffering. They ignored those families -- they ignored the families of those who died. Throughout this hearing you have continued to ignore them to this very day.
Shortly after my resignation, when I attended this public demonstration, in September 2020, and spoke publicly about the deaths within the nursing homes, I was placed under investigation. And my presence at that rally seems to form the substantive basis, a substantive basis for some of the complaints, so-called complaints against me.

Yes, it was wrong of me to attend a public hearing, to contradict that would be facile. It was entirely wrong of me to attend, to supervene or go beyond public health guidelines, but the question before the Committee here is: Why did I do it? I have been a physician for 30 years. I have explained to you what was happening in the nursing homes, people were dying.
So yes, I didn’t use hand sanitizer, and yes, I may not have social distanced at a public rally, but is there any cognisance here whatsoever of ends justifying means? Is there any cognisance here of perhaps, yes, I did, I fully accept I overstepped the line? But I put it to the Committee, I put it to anyone in this room:
If your grandmother was under my care, or your elderly family member was under my care and died as a consequence of what I was witnessing, would you expect your family physician maybe to speak out, to say something to try and do something?
The crime of speaking out

Because if what happened in my nursing home that I cared for was to happen all over again, I would go to another rally, I would, because the crime, the so-called crime that I committed certainly pales in significance to the crime that I was witnessing.
The formal documents, the directives, the physical evidence of these atrocities have been placed before the Council. The Irish Times, RTÉ, and institutions who pushed a blind adherence to all of these guidelines are not interested in that documentary evidence.
And no politician or expert has been investigated, or even asked to account for any of these atrocities.
On March 4th 2021, my colleague, Dr. Gerry Waters, was suspended by the Medical Council, suspended from the medical register; he was deprived of his livelihood for refusing to administer Covid-19 vaccines to his patients and refusing to refer for PCR testing, which he correctly recognised as not detecting clinically relevant cases, and it was being used to inflate numbers and instill fear into the general public.
The then President of the Medical Council, Dr. Doyle, issued a written directive that was mentioned today. And the written directive was that doctors had a moral and ethical and professional, I quote:
“A professional and ethical duty to promote public health guidelines.”

Not simply to adhere to public health guidelines. And the use of the word promote I have pointed out throughout this hearing was targeted and specific, it was targeted towards me and targeted to my profession.
That single word effectively deprived us doctors of any right of criticism, and obligated every doctor in Ireland to follow orders or face the consequences, because any form of criticism is a failure to promote, any form whatsoever is failure to promote.
And the President of the Medical Council to walk upon the Constitution of Ireland and to rewrite the Guide for Ethical Behaviour for doctor, no doctor is morally obligated or ethically obligated to promote a therapy or a drug or a treatment or a guideline if he or she feels that those guidelines are dangerous or detrimental to the health or wellbeing of their patients.
First do no Harm
But that single rule, that single rule, first do no harm, that’s contradicted exactly in Dr. Doyle’s directive that was issued to all of us.

And Dr. Waters, when he was suspended, what was the purpose of that, if not to send a message to all of us, to all doctors in Ireland, that if you do not administer the Covid vaccine, or you do not promote the public health guidelines, you face similar consequences. So what was happening to the Irish Medical Council? The Irish Medical Council is supposed to exist, when I was a member, according to its raison d’etre is to protect patients, not to order doctors to promote public health guidelines regardless of their conscience and regardless of their understanding of what those guidelines are and their understanding of therapeutics.
But despite the warning issued by the Medical Council in written form and in practical forms of suspending a colleague for refusing to administer the vaccine, a steady stream of my colleagues followed, despite the warning, the censures and despite the erasure, and despite the media slur from RTÉ and The Irish Times and the Independent;

Dr. Patrick Morrissey,
the late Dr. Martin Feely,
Dr. Neville Wilson,
Dr. Vincent Carroll,
Dr. Anne McCluskey,
Dr. William Ralph, sitting here beside me today,
Dr. Gerry Waters,
Dr. Mick McConville

So was I in isolation? No, I wasn’t, thankfully and fortunately I wasn’t. Fortunately I think for my profession. Some have already been sanctioned, and some are awaiting their hearings with the expectation -- with the exception, and with the exception of the late Dr. Martin Feely, all of the aforementioned have come to some or all of these hearings and to my hearing to show their support. And I know that Dr. Martin Feely would be here with us today were he still here.

It is ironic, I repeat, beyond ironic that the raison d’etre, the motto of the Irish Medical Council is to protect patients and support doctors.
I have been under investigation by this Council for almost six years now. It is probably one of the longest and protracted investigations in the history of the Irish Medical Council.
During my hearing I have not spoken of the toll this investigation has taken upon my family, my friendships, I will only say that at the height of this investigation, myself and my family felt compelled to close my practice, to sell our home and move from our neighbourhood, in part because some of our neighbours didn’t wish that their children should play with the children of the ‘anti-vax doctor.’
The Medical Council that I served on, I believe, has a role to play in that, because I did resign, I wrote a resignation letter, and I raised the concerns, but they weren’t listened to, they were dismissed, and so I am here today. Yes, my language may have been inappropriate. Yes, Twitter is an inappropriate forum, but that doesn’t get past the fact that I raised my concerns with Dr. Doyle, with the Medical Council, of which I was a member of, and those concerns were flatly dismissed and ignored.
You have decided to issue your findings some six years after the investigation has begun. I can only presume that the Council feels the public have forgotten some of the atrocities that were presided over, that the Medical Council, I feel, has failed or refused to investigate or consider.
Whilst I must accept the findings, and I will accept the findings of this hearing, if I am to continue to work and to pay my bills, I do not see this as an honest hearing.

Those who died avoidable lonely deaths in the nursing homes have not been heard.
Those patients who died and were deprived of screening and care during the lockdowns have not been heard.
Those who suffered mental health depression and suicide as a consequence of unnecessary lockdowns have not been heard.
Those children who were deprived of two formative years of their education and normal development have not been heard.
Those who have suffered and died and been injured as a consequence of the so-called vaccines, they have not been heard.
The increase in medical mortality in this country and beyond, since the introduction of genetic vaccines, they have not been heard.
The increased incidence of cancers since the introduction of these vaccines, they have not been heard either.

To my mind and to my conscience this hasn’t been a hearing. There has been no hearing, and for as long as those responsible remain within the positions they occupy today, there will be no hearing.

In failing to hear these people, these real people, these patients, the Medical Council, I feel, has utterly failed in its remit. And until those voices are heard, be they alive or be they dead, then I say to you, not as a doctor, but as a man, as a father, as a Christian and as a citizen of the Irish republic, that until there is a full public Inquiry into what has been visited upon the people, it is my honest and humble opinion that the government and its regulatory authorities, who acted on its behalf during this pandemic, have blood on their hands.
No Apologies
And I will finish upon this point; you have issued your findings and your verdict, and whilst I must respectfully accept those findings, I say to you again, I make no apologies for being guided by my conscience. I make no apologies for advocating for my patients. I make no apologies for refusing to administer a drug or a vaccine, which I know in my heart and in my mind and in my education, to be both dangerous and unnecessary.
To paraphrase an old philosopher; one day we will all stand before a different court, a higher court, much higher than this one and any of the Courts of men, and I know in my heart that that is a court where a great many of the verdicts of this world will be resoundingly overturned. And that is my submission.”