Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Theoretically, there should be such a mechanism. I take the Deputy's point about the Irish Medicines Board and the varying standards. Of course, there is also the European Medicines Agency, which licenses drugs that are being marketed generally in Europe. The pharmaceuticals issue is one of the big-ticket items in the negotiations on the TTIP and there is understandable concern everywhere about what will emerge at the end. It is important for people who take an interest in these matters to monitor what the Commission is producing in order to secure access from the US to its documents and records. There are several very active civil society groups, very often peopled by scientists and industry players - people who know, one hopes, what they are talking about - which are monitoring these issues very carefully.

Somebody made the point recently that despite all the material on the Commission's website, very few people are reading it. In a way it does not matter how many people read it; it is more a question of ensuring the right people read it. Therefore, it is very important that if this committee, for example, is taking an interest in this matter, that members read the material or get people they know who are experts in this area to read and explain it, as most of us would require it to be explained, and then feed that into their deliberations. It is very important that this starts to happen now because by the time it gets to the end game, it will be too late. A lot of the material is very complicated and it also depends on who is mediating what is there. There could, for instance, be a section of a pharmaceutical joint protocol which states that X, Y and Z are agreed. However, one side might say, "This is great, it means such and such", while the other might say, "No, actually it means something else". Nothing is ever simple but what is important is not the numbers of people looking at this but that there is sufficient information out there for the people who are informed to be able to advise people like the committee members.