Mr. Tony O'Brien:

As I understand it, there are still issues to be determined in terms of how the legislation will be finally framed, as it has not yet been passed, and how it will be implemented. We would have been engaged in modelling various scenarios for the impact on our overall drugs expenditure of various scales of reduction in the price of drugs. That information is available to the Department and used by it in making the policy decisions, which are the responsibility of the Department and the Ministers rather than the HSE.