Mr. Finian Judge:

A couple of questions were directed to the Department. Deputy O'Reilly referred to the Department being out of the loop. That was a decision taken by the Oireachtas when it passed the 2013 Act. The idea was that responsibility would be solely vested in the HSE. The Minister has no role in the final decision-making process. That is contained in statute in the 2013 Act.

There was a question about BeNeLuxA. As committee members probably know, the whole concept of regional collaboration is in its infancy. There are a few regional collaboration groups across Europe. We signed up to BeNeLuxA in June of this year. The BeNeLuxA grouping envisages collaboration in four domains. The idea is to collaborate around information exchange, HTA, horizon scanning and joint price negotiations. At this point our involvement is in its early stages, as committee members will appreciate. The win so far for us is really around information exchange. In fact, some of my colleagues today are at a meeting in Vienna on BeNeLuxA. We are merely getting into the process at this stage.

We intend to work on the other domains as the initiative develops.