Professor Tamara Hervey:

In terms of being satisfied about the smooth transition, the Deputy asked whether I am convinced, and I am not really in a position to comment on that as an outsider or a lawyer. What I can speak about from my research in the UK is with regard to the type of questions asked by the equivalent committee in Westminster, which is also chaired by a GP. It wanted granular information and to see lists of all of the products where an EU country was implicated in the supply chain. It wanted to see what exactly was the plan for each product, whether it could be stockpiled, who was stockpiling it and where the stockpile was to be held because, of course, warehousing is an issue in the English NHS. The way supply chains work here in the health system is rather different. If the committee has this type of granular information about products, then I would say it can be satisfied.

The unknown is the issue of leakage back into the UK market of pharmaceutical products intended for Irish patients in Ireland. An incentive to leak those products back to the UK because, as has been alluded to, of problems in the UK health system would be something for the Irish health system to be attentive to. I have not seen evidence it will happen but, of course, we are in such a situation of uncertainty and flux that one is having to imagine what might happen and how rational actors, profit-maximising actors or perhaps desperate people might react.

I understand the committee has already done quite a lot of work on scrutinising the planning in terms of products. The service provision is a different question because it has to do with people and a legally informal set of arrangements that exists as contracts having European Union law sitting underneath them as a foundation. If the foundation is removed, will the contracts stand? Will they be like an RSJ beam that sits there and so they will fine or will there be a potential problem without the foundation? I cannot answer the question on whether I am satisfied but I can respectfully suggest the type of questions on which the committee might want to be satisfied. The committee probably already is, as the Deputy indicated it has had some quite robust exchanges with the HSE and the Minister.