Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Implications for Health Sector of United Kingdom's Withdrawal from the EU: Discussion (Resumed)

Dr. Lorraine Nolan:

I will come back to the point on shortages. Mr. Breslin has just mentioned that we receive approximately 45 shortage notifications per month and it is very important for the committee to understand that less than 50% of those notifications go on to be an issue where medicine supply is short. In all those cases - we have had 90 of those shortages in the past five months - we have never had a case of a patient being left without a treatment for a particular condition because there have always been alternatives. It is important to get that point across. Dr. Fisher can speak about how the shortages framework operates in terms of engagement.