Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am working towards ensuring that we can open the ED when it is fully ready to be opened. Senators Swanick and O'Donnell and many other colleagues brought up the issue of Orkambi today. The 2013 Act is very clear that the HSE leadership team has to make a decision to reimburse or not and then there is a middle one where we reimburse but we have no money. That is a matter on which the HSE is now adjudicating. I feel strongly, as does the HSE, that the process must be reaching a conclusion at this stage and that it is vital to patients to create certainty as quickly as possible. I have been highly critical of the drugs company in the past but I do not want to go there now, as Senator O'Donnell says, because I want to see this process brought to an end. I do not want to see patients waiting anxiously any longer. I want to bring forward an answer, whatever that answer may be, as quickly as possible. I hope to be able to do that in the coming short weeks. That is as specific as I can be this afternoon.