Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I shall be brief. Can a prescribing audit be carried out in pharmacies? Audits would allow us to see trends, for example, of local GPs prescribing expensive drugs. The audit could be done in a general practice. Is an audit carried out on a random basis? Is scientific data pulled from the reimbursement figures?

I wish to mention parallel trading but shall not go into too much detail. If the HSE, the Department or whoever makes an agreement with a company to supply a product at a certain price, is supply guaranteed? Is it just the price that is guaranteed? When one enters a contract to sell something one normally agrees to supply the product as well.

I am just wondering because wholesaling obviously suits pharmaceutical companies. Basically, it is transferring from a cheap to a dear state, so it suits them to have that going. If they are producing a product, would the witnesses not think that in the price contract there would also be an agreed supply contract, which is the normal course in any other business? If I am selling milk, I must supply it at the agreed price.

I am only guessing because I do not know a lot about this but I assume that there are very few launches of patented products in Spain. I am guessing most of them are in Germany and other high-cost markets, or am I wrong? If that is the case, surely that is almost market manipulation in a way. It is a system tied into a minimum of three countries. One launches a patented product and it is in the high-cost country, and it works out from there. Is there any way that the EU or any other organisation or entity could assess or address this issue? That is the obvious one we are all looking at here and which we should talk about.