Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Not for this. The only thing directing us in terms of the heel prick test is clinical advice. It is not a question of money at all. It is about clinical advice for what is best. The national screening service is funding large-scale advertising campaigns to encourage people to attend for screening. This endeavour has been funded.

Similarly, rare diseases were mentioned. One of the things this Government has been keen to do is to provide additional funding for drugs, a good number of which are so-called orphan drugs for rare diseases. Last year, development funding of €50 million was provided for new drugs. In the budget we are considering today, it is €30 million. There are larger, full-year impacts in this regard, so there will be more money than this in the following years. Of the total number of new drugs approved over the past two years, between these two budgets, quite a number have been orphan drugs and intended for these rare diseases. We can get the committee a more detailed note, if that might be useful, but the short answer is that a lot of activity is going on in this regard.