Dr. Michael McCarthy:

In principle. If I see a patient with insurance that is in one of these categories, every time I refer them to a colleague in a private hospital they have got access to the drug, and I know plenty of cases where it was demonstrated to be effective. Just this past weekend, at the European Society of Medical Oncology conference, which is a European flagship conference for systemic therapy, it was announced that there were a range of breakthroughs across multiple cancer types. I would expect that many of those will get EMA approval in the months ahead. I think it is plausible to believe that private cancer patients with insurance will have access to those drugs in the months ahead. For public patients, however, I would expect that a fraction of those drugs will reach a HSE reimbursement decision within the next two to three years. Going ahead, therefore, I can see this gap in access only widening. Now, there are all sorts of subtleties to this debate and you have to add into that things like cost-benefit analysis and how we want to spend our money, but the reality is that they are treatments that, in my professional opinion, I would like to have available to treat patients with.