Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Commissioner and his colleagues and apologise for being unavoidably late. I am interested in a couple of the country-specific recommendations to which he referred in his script and which were in the published recommendations. One has to do with VAT. The document from the Commission states that the Commission questions the efficiency of reduced and zero-rated consumption taxes - that is value added tax here - and calls for a systematic evaluation of these expenditures. We had a very welcome initiative in the context of the difficult financial circumstances in which we found ourselves, with a reduction in VAT from 13.5% to 9% in the tourism sector and a consequent significant increase in the number of sustainable jobs created. It would appear to me that the Commission is suggesting such initiatives are neither worthy nor sustainable and I wonder if the Commissioner would like to comment further on that.

The Commission document also recommends what would find unanimous agreement here, namely, reduced public expenditure on patented medicines. However, as Ireland is a relatively small country that is successful in attracting a perhaps disproportionate share of foreign direct investment, specifically in the pharmaceutical sector, that sector is very valuable for us. It is difficult for individual nation states to grapple with the power of the large multinational pharmaceutical industries to achieve affordable patented drug prices.

We have cases which regularly hit the headlines here of individual patients' medicines costing perhaps in excess of €500,000 per annum. There is a consequent tension between the right of the individual to access medicines to sustain life on the one hand, and affordability on the other. Is there a role for the Commission at EU level, which would have greater strength to deal with this issue collectively across the 28 member states? Exorbitant prices are being charged to individual public health services for patented medicines.