Mr. John Hennessy:

I would like to finish on a couple of the points raised. Professor Barry might want to comment a bit more on the changes that are happening in the pharmaceutical world that are moving now away from the high volume products towards rarer products and higher prices. That does seem to be a significant pattern. Perhaps it explains why we are back at this committee for the second time this year; that signifies in its own way the importance of this issue as an emerging issue for so many people.

To finish on Deputy Kenny's point, it does not appear that the product being made in Ireland gives us any entitlement to better pricing by the way but maybe that should be something that is worth considering a bit further. It does not appear that way to us anyway in terms of pricing strategies that are accompanying applications.

On Deputy O'Reilly's point about structured or more structured measures to address stakeholder involvement, I think we would be open to exploring that and examining that further. Stakeholder, patient and advocacy groups are very welcome to make submissions as part of any application that is being processed at any time and to be heard. We are happy to conduct oral hearings in the course of the assessment of a new product, but if there are measures that can be done to strengthen that and improve that I think we would be very open to that. Obviously, at some point the process has to close and the decision get taken on an application. Otherwise it goes on indefinitely.