Mr. Shaun Flanagan:

The hospital system is manual so it is difficult to get good data from it, but the vast majority of our spend occurs in the primary care and that is fully electronic. Getting that type of data to the Senator is possible with one constraint which is the databases as currently constructed do not capture orphan status. It is a data field that will have to be added in. In gross terms concerning generic uptake and cost, it is possible to get that figure, as it is for what is on patent and not on patent. Patents are very complicated. We have proxies in our databases that we can use as a proxy for a patent. A patent is not a single thing. For an individual drug, there could be 17 or 25 different patents. We have proxies for monopoly suppliers. We have markers for what is generic. We can link those in our databases and give the committee data on uptake.

Generic uptake throughout the country runs at about 75%. It is important to remember that within reference pricing legislation, which Deputy Brassil and Deputy O'Connell would be aware of from their previous roles as pharmacists, patients can choose to get the brand and pay a surplus or clinicians can say that on an exceptional basis a patient can be provided with a brand. There are reasons we use brands. In one instance it does not cost us anything but where a prescriber says there is an exceptional reason a patient should get the brand, it costs us. I hope I have made myself clear.