Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 October 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Treatment of Rare Diseases: Discussion

2:00 am

Professor Michael Barry:

I would say it is a combination of them. There is no denying that there is an economic component to it and that it is a robust assessment of the clinical evidence and how it relates to the economics of it. For all the assessments, particularly for cancer drugs and drugs for rare diseases, we do seek the opinion of experts. We are very grateful to them. They feed into virtually every assessment we do. For example, with the chimeric antigen receptor, CAR T-cell therapy, we have very good local contacts. They have been fantastic in guiding us through the clinical aspects of that. At the end of the day, we are looking at all the healthcare benefits and all the costs, and trying to marry all of those together.