Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I will be brief. I appreciate the opportunity and thank the witnesses for being here. For years, I have been dealing with patients who rely on the drug Respreeza. I thank the Alpha One Foundation for great work it does. Unfortunately, patients have had to come to the Dáil to highlight their plight. The witnesses are well aware of patients, families and, as has already been said, real people who are literally living on borrowed time and who do not know whether they will have the drug for next month. It is an awful way to live one's life. I appreciate that the witnesses are very respectable people doing a job and living within the constraints that are there but, as I asked a while ago, what price can one put on a human life? One cannot put a price on it. I agree 100% that the companies must be made accountable for the money they charge and must be made aware that they cannot charge outrageous prices. Those companies have a social responsibility to ensure that people can live their lives. All these people want is the bare minimum as regards quality of life in order that they will know that when they go to bed at night, they will be able to get up in the morning, that the drug will be available for them and that they will be able to continue to live with their families. That is all we want. I have pleaded with the Minister and I am aware that he understands the situation 100%. I have asked how we could say to people that we cannot afford to provide the drug for them. There is a social responsibility. I am not putting this all back on the witnesses or the Department. I am saying that it relates to the companies.

There is a thing called respectability. The message should go out from here, on an cross-party basis, that we are outraged by the way companies are holding people's lives to ransom. To those people who put such a high charge on the drug, I would say that I respect the fact that they must make money and be profitable but there is such a thing as extortion. Just because a company can charge an extraordinary amount of money does not mean it should do so. I would like this message to go out from the committee. I appreciate the work the committee is doing here. I do not want to put anybody above anybody else but the work being done by this committee is more important than anything else. We want to tell citizens of this State that when they require a drug, they will get it regardless of cost. At the same time, we do not want to the Government to be fleeced.