Mr. Robert Watt:

The Minister is very committed to this. She has met the Deputy's colleagues on it and is very committed to looking at the process of early access for drugs that address various conditions, particularly rare conditions. The Minister has a big challenge in managing the health budget. The drugs budget is increasing 9% or 10% a year. It is €3.6 billion or €3.7 billion now. The trajectory is unsustainable as we are now. I hope we will be engaging in negotiations in the next few weeks with the representative bodies of the pharmaceutical companies and we will see where we end up with those.

There is a very significant constraint and a significant budgetary challenge which we and all countries now face. If you look at the ongoing growth of existing drugs we have approved and have gone through the process Mr. Gloster mentioned and what that means for the budget, and you then overlay the new drugs that are coming on stream, it is an incredible challenge for us and all countries. People can talk about Mounjaro or Ozempic or pick any class of drug or various drugs in the oncology space and the demands now and the demands that are in prospect are absolutely incredible. There is an enormous challenge in terms of how to figure out what to support, how to support and how to fix that within a financial envelope the country can afford. However, the Minister is very committed to it. The outcome of the conversations we are having this autumn will provide some guidance as to where we go into the future.