Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I met the pharmaceutical industry on multiple occasions during the endless Brexit negotiations, and many companies have spent much money restructuring their footprints in Ireland and the UK. If you take my constituency, for example, which probably has the second largest cluster of pharmaceuticals in the EU, all the big brands are there and nearly all of those companies have a big footprint in the UK as well. The manufacturing systems effectively relied on Ireland and the UK seamlessly interacting on ingredients, packaging and research and development programmes and so on. Some of that was restructured recognising the likely outcome of Brexit and ensuring that products being produced for the EU market were being finished in the EU. Every company is different, but that is my understanding of what many of them have done.

I am not aware that the UK is looking to ban EU certified medicines coming into the UK. However, the reverse is not the same. Within the EU, because of its size and scale, it essentially does not recognise approval bodies from third countries. I would be very surprised if the UK were to reciprocate and only to be able to access medicines that are certified in the UK. Maybe I will ask Mr. Gardner to come in to make sure what I said is accurate.