Mr. Pat O'Mahony:

Much activity takes places between those who facilitate the payment from the purchaser to the seller and the Internet providers. Operation Pangea co-ordinated by Interpol around the world puts a specific focus on all those areas. We regularly report websites, following which they are closed down. Every week we have websites closed down. However, the reality is that these people establish a new website the next day and another the next day. We have a constant battle with the criminals involved in this trade.

There are two elements to this issue. Education is ultimately the best way of influencing people. The results of our consumer attitudes survey indicate that our constant messaging is telling people that this is a risky business in which to be engaged. The other issue is whether we can prevent such activity, as we do by seizing the products. We would not pretend to suggest we are seizing all the products coming in. Customs and Excise has a good system of profiling particular countries and products from particular sources which have particular types of stamps and so, but the criminals are constantly trying to find ways of getting products through. We are vigilant in this area and have a number of staff allocated to this work. I was asked once by a journalist on a radio programme if we were giving the issue a disproportionate amount of effort and whether the buyer should beware. Our view is that this is a public health concern and many incidents have been reported where people are damaged by these products. Often we cannot speak about them publicly because of issues of patient confidentiality.

During the past few years we have become aware of quite a number of people who have been badly damaged by some of these products. The public health message is constantly being delivered to the public and we take every opportunity we get to try to hammer it home.

With regard to individual purchases, anecdotally one is well aware that people go on holiday and purchase medicines abroad. It depends on what country they visit. In Germany medicines are more expensive than in Ireland, which is the reason we have parallel trading out of Ireland to Germany. In certain other countries such as Greece or others in southern Europe certain medicines are substantially cheaper, while others are the same price or more expensive. Consumers can buy these medicines legally. If they have a particular prescription regime and can acquire the same medicine from a pharmacy abroad, that is perfectly legal. Where someone brings a suitcase from abroad with a couple of years supply of medicine, we see this as a commercial operation, but if somebody comes through with a three month supply of medication, that is seen as an accepted practice.

I have covered the issue of leaflets. We are not involved in pricing, but prices in this country are dropping substantially. They are dropping as products come off patent, new deals are put in place and the issue substitution is followed up on.