Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses and I congratulate Dr. De Block. It is undoubtedly great to hear her speak on the subject, on which I have campaigned on for years. I believe, as Dr. Block obviously does, that we are all members of the European Union, we have all an equal entitlement to equal treatment and at an equal price as everybody else, regardless of which country we are from. The time has come to do something about this. I believe in early diagnosis, early treatment and early payment with no nonsense. The patient is waiting. The patient is a prisoner while waiting and while the rest of us talk about it, equivocate about it, and put forward nice proposals and so on and so forth.

It is time that we brought European Union countries together in the whole area of sourcing the orphan drugs, pricing the orphan drugs, and not allowing ourselves to be held to ransom by the drug companies. This is what is happening. Obviously they want to do deals with the bigger countries because it suits them. How does Dr. De Block feel about us smaller countries, those of us who are vocal on the subject, intervening at EU Commission level to try to ascertain the basis on which it is intended to treat all countries within the European Union in the same fashion? They can do this, they should do this and are bound to do so under the Internal Market and the Single European Act. That is the question. How does Dr. De Block feel about us going that way?