Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I hope to be brief. I thank Ms Maher for her presentation and compliment the local pharmacies. In every community, the local pharmacist is as important to customers as the general practitioner, GP.

Many of the questions on generic drugs have been answered, but how does the Irish Pharmacy Union, IPU, explain generic drugs to customers? Whenever people, even family members, speak with me, they believe that a generic drug is the yellow pack drug and that they should be getting the "proper" one. I encountered an incident in the past week. A member of my family was on generic drugs. It was only when she was prescribed the "proper" drug that she made some progress with her illness.

We are discussing quality of life. For me, that is still being able to comb my hair, wash myself and do all of the other things that are important to me in life when I reach 81 years of age or older. This is why I have an issue with people having so many prescriptions just to keep them alive. It is wrong. There has been a 73% increase in prescribed drugs and a longer life expectancy because of medication, but the ESRI has shown that a longer life does not mean a healthier one. This is an issue. I read the bleak figures from the HSE - 40% with chronic disease, 31% with heart disease and 30,000 new cancer patients. Have the witnesses statistics on how many people who live longer end up in nursing homes? It is what happens. We extend people's lives, but do they have quality of life? In my local area, the majority end up in nursing homes, including people who live close to me. We should instead be helping people to plan healthier lives. For example, how should we deal with young women who smoke during pregnancy? We send them to counselling, but it makes not one bit of difference. For the past couple of months, the committee has discussed alcohol and how to treat people who abuse it, particularly young people. Drug abuse is also an issue, be the drugs legal or illegal. If we start considering these questions instead of filling people up with prescription drugs, we might be doing more to sustain healthier lives. This is just my personal opinion. I am not a medical professional, unlike my esteemed colleague, Senator Crown, who knows much more about this issue.