Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

When I was Minister of State with responsibility for trade and development, I sought to establish a depot in Shannon to deal with disasters. There is such a facility in Italy, which is the only one in Europe. Shannon has the capacity for all sorts of transport required to deal with tsunamis, earthquakes and other unexpected events throughout the world. One of the reasons cited for our not being able to have a base in Ireland was the cost of drugs, given the many drugs associated with all of these major events. There was a substantial survey done on this in 2012. The problem was that it was not possible to get the quantity of generic drugs required at the right price. It was possible to get them anywhere else in the world but not in Ireland. Has the HSE tackled this problem?