James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Again, I thank the Deputy. I would like to make a few general points. The Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association and the Irish pharmaceutical sector are very important to this country, but we have a problem in that we have a very limited budget. We have just exited a bailout and the pressures of the health budget are well known. In the context of Fampyra, there are more than 7,000 people with multiple sclerosis, and at a cost of €6,000 each, it is €42 million per annum, which is an awful lot of money. For how many of these people will this drug be successful?

I would like to see the pharmaceutical industry engage in risk sharing so that in situations where there is a drug which we can prove by way of a blood test, a biopsy or an independent clinical assessment of the activities of daily living, such as walking distances, that it really improves the situation for patients, we will pay for those patients. However, what about the two thirds or the four fifths of patients for whom it does not work? Are we to pay from them also? Where is the role of the industry in this? Why does it not join us in terms of sharing the risk and if it does not work, let us negotiate what we will pay for those, if anything at all?

For a long time patients have looked to the Government to provide care and it is our duty to provide it, but I would like to appeal to patient groups to join the Government to ensure the new medicines which become available are made affordable for us to provide to our people and that the pharmaceutical industry engages in risk sharing in regard to these very expensive and sometimes hugely effective drugs that can have a life changing impact on people's daily activities which, as a doctor, I fully accept. However, I appeal to the pharmaceutical industry to engage with the health service in a way that these drugs become available at an affordable price for those who can avail of them and will benefit from them and that we look at some other way to deal with the high risk to the system for all those who use these drugs but do not get any benefit from them.

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