Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister does not need to tell me about the pharmaceutical industry and how it is profiteering from people. In the United States currently, one company has raised the price of an AIDS drug by 5,000%. It costs $1 dollar to produce the drug, but the cost has been increased from $13.50 to $750. That is the kind of profiteering these companies engage in.

The company that makes Orkambi made the point that if it reduced the price of Orkambi and related drugs for minority illnesses, it could be swallowed up by bigger drug companies. We see from this that ordinary people are being held hostage by the profiteering of these companies under our capitalist system. That is why I am a socialist and why I believe health should be a priority. I believe research should be conducted in a unified manner, with results shared by different companies. It would be best if it was funded by the Government and it and our health service should also be funded by progressive taxation.

If a member of the Minister's family was ill, we would be moving heaven and earth to ensure this drug became available. The Minister must negotiate to reduce the price. The HSE seemed to come out with a prejudged decision that frightened and upset a lot of families with a cystic fibrosis sufferer. This is not good enough. The cost should not be €90 million, but we could compare that with the €7 billion in interest we are paying on a debt that was not the debt of the ordinary people of this country. We need a completely different type of health service. The pharmaceutical companies that are provided with big tax incentives should be taken over and run in the interest of ordinary people.

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