Ms Anne Marie Seymour:

I made a short list of the points the Deputy raised and if I miss anything he can come back to me.

On the first piece around new medicines, my understanding is that in Ireland it is not always the finished product. Many of the medicines can be exported but I will engage with our colleagues in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on that and come back to him. Regarding new drugs coming on stream, there is a lot of work going on at European level for all European citizens at the moment. The pharmaceutical strategy and legislation was published in April. A working group has been developed across Government agencies and Departments looking at Ireland's position on that. The sole purpose of that is access, affordability and availability of medicines. That is something in which we are really actively involved and there is a huge body of work going on at European level in which we are heavily involved. There has been the Mazars report around new drugs coming on stream and their approval and that is a key deliverable for the Department at the moment. It has been given additional resources to progress work in that area.

On shortages of medicines, we are not the only country impacted. We do not have any evidence that suggests Ireland is more impacted than any other country in Europe. Unfortunately, there has been a big increase in shortages but it has been seen across Europe and the world in recent years. There are various factors to that. We are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact on supply chains. There are the geopolitical factors such as the war, the energy crisis and the cost of medicines. Again, there is a huge body of work being done in trying to address that and to enhance the security of supply of medicines for Irish citizens. Some of the proposals are included in this Bill to allow us to develop better systems for oversight of the medicines we have and to act faster when we know there are shortages coming, and there is also then that huge body of work being done at a European level in which we are heavily involved and with our medicines regulator, the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA. It has a medicines shortages framework which it manages on behalf of the Minister. That framework has been replicated in Europe and was the base for the system they use in Europe for assessing and managing medicine shortages. The Commission published a statement just last week on how we can work better at managing medicine security at a European level. There is a lot of work coming out of that in which we are really engaged.

On the pharmacy piece, the Minister is very supportive of the expansion of the scope of the practice of pharmacy access for everybody regardless of where they live in the country. Most citizens in Ireland live within approximately 5 km of a pharmacy. We have a large number of pharmacies and they are very accessible. Ireland had one of the biggest uptakes in vaccinations because people could access those through pharmacies. These are the kinds of things on which we want to build to enhance access to medicines and medical care in the primary care setting. If I have missed anything, the Deputy can advise.