Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The last group who were in were making the point about new drugs. They said over the last three years 61 new drugs have been made available. That sounded really good, but in the European Union context we are the second slowest. The witnesses might comment on that. Is it down to lack of funding in the system? Clearly screening works and the priority is to expand the screening programme, but can that be done without the €20 million the service was looking for? Was that part of what was being looked for to expand the programme? How can it be done within the existing programme? How can the services be expanded? On screening itself, if funding becomes available, what is the next area the witnesses are looking to expand on?