Ms Eibhlin Mulroe:

That describes the passion that exists in the system from the members of Cancer Trials Ireland, including the medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, haematologists and cancer research nurses who are working with patients every day. Those patients are looking to them for other options and they do not turn their backs on them. This organisation started 20 years ago to provide an opportunity for Irish patients with cancer to have another option. Deputy Donnelly asked about the IP and the costs around that. We commissioned DKM Economic Consultants to do an economic and health impact analysis in 2016. We were able to prove that there were cost savings of €6 million in 2016 in drug costs. That was for drug costs that would otherwise have been available within the system. The Deputy asked how much more expensive it is to put a patient on a trial than not to do so. It is actually cheaper for the system to put a patient on a trial. That is in very crude terms. We can prove it. The health impact takes it a step further because that patient gets quality adjusted life years, or QALYs as they are known in health economics. We have been able to prove that thousands of patients have had years of QALYs. One QALY is one perfect year of life. Many have got five to ten of them. That is one of the reasons trials are so successful now; they are running longer because patients are surviving for longer. The economic impact is very real. It is probably going to increase over time.

Deputy Brassil talked about access and innovative treatments. We are not in the business of health economics. That is not what we do. We run trials and the drugs we are working with are mostly experimental. Very often with experimental drugs, we are comparing standard of care treatments with an investigational product. Professor Hennessy may wish to jump in here. When that happens, if it is a pharmaceutical sponsored trial or if it is one of our investigator initiated trials, that drug is covered. The cost of those drugs on both arms of the trial are covered. In terms of the access piece, it is going to be an issue. I think the Irish Cancer Society will want to speak to that. However, in the absence of that, as I mentioned earlier, we have a patient here who benefited from being on a trial in respect of a drug that was not available in the system. We up the game in clinical trials and offer more options to Irish patients, and they live longer.