Mr. Shaun Flanagan:

I shall let Professor Barry talk about the medicines management programme. We have continued campaigns on the HSE website. We are also aware that individual companies have media campaigns. The HSE tries to be prudent in the way it spends its money. If it has a big advertisement campaign that costs €500,000, and its message coincides with what we want to say, then it makes sense for us to allow it to spend that money, if it so wishes, and for us to step back. If we need to intervene in the future then we will do so.

We had a campaign for the implementation programme. Our press and comments people were intimately involved in an implementation group. We met loads of groups, including groups that were vehemently opposed to generic substitution. They seem to have come around in some of the areas. Osteoporosis drugs are now 75% substituted and there has been no evidence of significant difficulty, or any difficulty at all, reported to the Irish Medicines Board or the Health Products Regulatory Authority as it is now called.

I am sorry as I think I have taken possibly too much time.