Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman. I focus on health care and my first questions relates to generic drugs substitution, which has been in place for a short time. I have seen three or four sets of figures that have been bandied around. I am not at all convinced that we have done enough. A saving of €50 million last year and €25 million this year has been made by substituting generic for branded drugs. The penetration rate of generic drugs has reached 68% by volume of drugs. A saving of €75 million over a two year period does not sound to me as if a significant amount of work has been done on this issue. I wonder if we have done enough in this respect. Some 10% of drugs used in this country are generic drugs whereas the average in the United Kingdom is 80% generic drugs. I am not saying we should reach the 80% target for use of generic drugs. Has there been real reform, and if so, why have the savings not been greater? Savings of €75 million over two years seems very low in real terms.

The question is about reform, timeframe and savings. I am not convinced. The cost of pharmaceuticals within the health care sector went from €570 million to over €2 billion in a seven-year period. With the introduction of generic drugs, we are talking about a saving of only €75 million in two years. I am worried about that.

The second issue I want to raise is the crisis in the Mediterranean. This has been very serious issue for the last two years but we had not really taken any notice of it until four to six weeks ago. I am approaching it from a totally different point of view. While we need to take emergency action to deal with the problem, to a large extent, Europe and America have been the contributors to that problem. The arms and ammunition industry across Europe and the US has contributed to creating conflicts in a lot of places. When we overthrew Gaddafi in Libya, there was a huge surplus of arms which went to all sorts of groups and we are now paying the price. When thinking about policy in the short-term, we should be looking at the long-term consequences. We are now feeling the long-term consequences of some of the decisions that were taken five, eight or ten years ago and are having to pick up the pieces. Is this issue of countries selling arms and ammunition into developing countries and the Middle East on the agenda in Europe? If so, what do we intend doing about it?