Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

If you take Germany, for example, it brings a drug onto the market, and while I know we are talking about larger volumes of patients, it negotiates the price over the following 12 months and the drug is available to patients at a very early stage. I know it can afford to do that because it has larger numbers. We might have a drug that is only suitable for 50 patients here while it might be 5,000 patients in Germany and I fully understand that. Surely we should look at trying to progress the current situation? Professor Barry has outlined the process in Ireland. We are now behind most other European countries regarding the timeframe from the time a company applies for a drug to be approved to actually getting it approved.