Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise to the Minister of State for leaving earlier but I had to attend a vote in the Seanad. Like Deputy Crowe, I would like to comment on the drugs cost issue. The cost of drugs in this country has been allowed to increase from €560 million in 2000 to €2 billion by 2010, which is an almost 300% increase in a short time. The legislation in relation to generic drugs has since been introduced. Currently, €2 billion of the €13.2 billion health budget is spent on medicines and so on. We do not appear to have brought on board all of the players in the health care sector. For example, the IMO recently appeared before the Joint Committee on Health and Children and was heavily critical of various issues in relation to Government. The point I made to them was they had a part to play. The complaint from hospitals is that there is over-prescribing by GPs and GPs are complaining about medication being prescribed in hospitals. There appears to be no attempt to work together to bring down the huge cost of drugs to the health budget. We have fallen down in terms of getting people to work together. It is in everybody's interest that this huge cost be reduced. Legislation is welcome but this is not only about legislation, it is about getting people on board. If in the morning a facility to which people could bring unused medicines was open, one would have no problem filling a skip very quickly. We are not doing enough in this area. It is an issue that must be addressed.

The second issue of concern for me is that of legal services costs. A matter I tabled for discussion on today's Adjournment Debate in the Seanad was, unfortunately, not selected.

I will return to it next week. I raised the matter 18 months ago of a third Taxing Master being appointed to the High Court. We are talking about legal costs but people have finished cases as long as three years ago and nobody has been paid because decisions are not being made when cases have been dealt with by the courts and costs are not finalised. The only solution is to appoint a third Taxing Master to sort out the problem. Taxing Masters have reduced costs substantially but we should give the people involved in providing a service the opportunity to get paid. I raised the issue 18 months ago but now we have a worse problem than before. The matter must be sorted out once and for all.

Cases that would take less than four hours have no decision on costs a year later. We speak about money flowing in the economy but, unfortunately, in this area people who have provided a service have not been paid. We have a part to play in this process. We can talk about a legal services Bill all we like but if we are not prepared to provide the adjudication process for decisions to be made in order that people can get paid fairly for the work done, we are wasting our time with any reform. I ask that the matter be examined.