Professor Colum Dunne:

The Health Products Regulatory Authority does a very good job. It is recognised as being exceptionally professional and competent in respect of the regulation of the introduction and the safety of the products available in Ireland. This takes into account the associated parallel importing challenges.

The dissemination of information on generic products is problematic in that many people use the Internet as their primary source of information. When we assessed the information available in Ireland, the UK, Canada, the USA and Australia, we found that Wikipedia is far and away the primary source. The accuracy of information available from that source is questionable. When we go further down the list and evaluate the quality and understandability of the information available on various sites, we did not find any site - or certainly no site in Ireland - providing both high-quality and understandable information for the general public which ranked highly in any search. As members will be aware, people tend not to proceed beyond the first or second page of search results.