Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their very comprehensive presentations. I know some of them face a difficult task in dealing with this issue.

Some of the issues I wished to raise have been raised already so I will be brief. According to the presentation, since 1993 there are about 400 children with developmental delay and about 100 with physical malformation. Do we have accurate figures, including for the number of families affected? Are there situations where there might be more than one child in a family affected? Every child needs support but it is something that needs to be examined at the earliest opportunity and to ensure that those families have adequate support. I am interested to know how many families need support now? What further work needs to be done to try and establish a very accurate figure on this so that the supports can be put in place?

I have a general question for Dr. Gilvarry on the overall process in regard to medication and medicines in Ireland. Over the last two years, we as a committee have come under a lot of pressure to make sure that medication, if one can call it that, be made available in cases where there is no clear scientific evidence that it does not have detrimental effects in the long term. Here, we have a situation where we have medication that has gone through all the research and development, has been in place and working for 25 or 30 years and problems are arising with it. Is any process to review medications available in Europe or Ireland, where even if a product is around for 20 years, we might need to review it occasionally? I know it would be a difficult task because there are so many pharmaceuticals on the market. Just because a product solves some problems, that does not mean that it might not cause others.

When a problem is identified in Europe or Ireland, have we a process that reacts fast enough when deficiencies in what is being provided are highlighted? Big pharmaceuticals are very well able to defend their positions and they have the power of public relations and so on, to ensure that where any deficiencies are found in a medication, that they are downplayed. They can put their own pressures on bodies, including us as Members of the Oireachtas that we should back off on raising queries on the issue. Have we sufficient red alert systems in place? Is there a need to be far more proactive in that area? There are so many medications available and we have an issue where one medication may not go with another. Medical practitioners are always under pressure, and trying to keep them up to date is difficult. Have we done enough in this area? We might criticise the HPRA sometimes for not processing a product fast enough, we must be careful to make sure that when products are on the market, they deliver what they say they will.

We need to look at these areas. There seems to have been a delay in this case. The information did go out but it is about it going out to the relevant people and being effective in getting the message across to them. I am not clear about whether the way we did that messaging was effective.