Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Kelleher for bringing forward this important legislative proposal. I commend the Deputy on his work in this area and assure him that I and Government will support the reading of this Bill for a Second Time. In doing so, I caution that, as has already been recognised by Deputy Kelleher, we need to do a good bit of work to tease through the Bill before it proceeds to the next Stage. I note the Deputy is open to having a kind of pre-legislative scrutiny stage at the Committee on Health where, I think, we can work through the detail. That would be important.

The Government fully subscribes to the objectives behind the Deputy's Bill, which are primarily to protect the public. I am committed to working with Deputy Kelleher, Deputy Brassil and Members of this House to come up with more workable solutions to achieve full transparency in funding and supports provided by either medical device suppliers or pharmaceutical companies to healthcare providers and healthcare organisations. That phrase "full transparency" is appropriate. Nobody here is trying to shut down a source of funding or support. It is about ensuring that any funding or support received is fully transparent. Deputy Brassil correctly stated that those of us in this House are rightly subjected to that level of transparency. Many in public office and positions of public influence are rightly subjected to a degree of transparency. It is important that such transparency which, as Deputy Louise O'Reilly correctly stated, is so often wanted by clinicians, is clearly put in place in a consistent manner.

As I am obliged to do, I will outline some of the areas that we need to clarify as we further scrutinise the Bill. We need to look at the Bill being clearer in its definitions so that we have a definite idea of its scope. For example, does "medical equipment" mean "medical devices" or is it broader? As the Bill is currently drafted, its scope relates to medical practitioners only. However, we know that dentists and some nurses also prescribe medicines and that pharmacists play a key role in the delivery of healthcare. We can have that debate and tease out those issues. The inclusion of other professional regulators will be required for this purpose and the logistics and costs of that will have to be assessed. Furthermore, healthcare organisations also receive funding and support from industry and in order to be comprehensive and equitable, the Bill should also deal with these recipients. Therefore, while I support the general thrust of the Bill because I agree with its overall objectives, I believe there is potential to broaden its scope to achieve full transparency.

We must aim for full transparency on all transactions between industry and healthcare providers in order to assure the public that the relationship between the respective parties does not influence the clinical judgment or clinical decisions. The public must have full confidence that healthcare providers prescribe treatment or administer appropriate care based solely on the clinical evidence before them and that they do so also with patient safety and the health and welfare of patients as the overall motivation. I have no doubt that is the overall motivation for the overwhelming majority of those working in the health service.

The Medical Council and other professional regulators are already working to protect the public. In addition to complaints and fitness to practice their role has already expanded in terms of the development of professional competence schemes and providing assistance to individual medical practitioners to ensure that their practice meets the highest standards. Enforcement of this current proposed legislation will add a further challenging workload to the council, when there may be an alternative route to achieve the same end-point through other legislation.

Legislative scrutiny, as I have said, needs to take place on the Bill to investigate what is the best form of legislation to achieve our overall shared objectives. While the OECD reported that most countries rely significantly on self-regulation to prevent inappropriate business practices between the industry and providers, there are some examples of countries, such as the USA and France, where legislation has been successfully enacted to address these issues.

Other countries have done this already and it is for that reason that I support Deputy Kelleher's Bill. However, I have cautioned that we need to collectively examine it carefully, to explore how best the legislation can be framed to achieve the ultimate aim of full transparency in relation to the transactions between industry and the providers of care. We owe it to the public to develop robust legislation. The efforts of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association in relation to voluntary disclosure of transfer value should be acknowledged but this has only been partially achieved due to data protection impediments. Legislation in other jurisdictions should also be examined in order to ensure that we achieve the absolute optimum outcome.

I sincerely thank Deputy Kelleher for bringing forward this Bill which moves on this process. We have been talking in this House about doing something in this area for a long time and Deputy Kelleher's Bill is an honest and decent attempt to do so. I look forward to it being scrutinised by the Oireachtas Committee on Health and then seeing this legislation progress through both Houses. I hope we can work in the spirit of co-operation and collaboration to bring about the best legislation and to arrive at a point where we can inject full transparency into this area, which is what we all want.

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