Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Taoiseach's response and I thank him for it but he and I both know that the current position where women suffering from the same form of cervical cancer are treated differently is not sustainable. It is only a matter of time before they or their legal representatives will go into the court to demand that the constitutional requirement for equal treatment be vindicated. Will the Taoiseach tell the House today that he will sit down with the Minister, Deputy Harris, to instruct the HSE to begin to negotiate with the drug company mentioned to ensure that all women who suffer from cervical cancer and whose clinicians determine that Pembrolizumab would be of benefit to them will have that drug made available to them? If there is a knock-on from that in respect of other cancers, that is something we can deal with. However, this is a form of cancer and the Taoiseach cannot look two women suffering from the same disease in the eye and say that the State will provide potentially life-saving treatment for one of them and not the other. He knows we cannot do that.

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