Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy again for raising this matter. I said to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, before coming here that I did not know exactly what I would say in my closing statement. Having listened to the Deputy, however, and being a female who has been through three childbirths, and who was quite sick during two of them, I will be honest with her. A solution was found. Cariban was the drug, and the reimbursement was put in place. That is great and welcome and was well done. However, if you are at home lying on the couch and you are really ill, you need to go to your GP. You do not have the energy to get into the car to go sit in an accident and emergency department.

I will do one thing first. I will call on the drug companies that have the licences for Xonvea, Exeltis and Navalem to put in an application. I am not leaving it to the HSE; I am asking the drug companies to start that process. That needs to happen.

The second thing I will do is call on the GPs and the consultants to work together, perhaps using telemedicine and so on.

It is unlicensed so we have to work within the rules of it. If a GP requested a prescription from a consultant initially and if he was to be able to prescribe that, that would assist in fast-tracking the delivery of it in the interim while the drug companies are putting in a reimbursement for it. I understand why the risk has to be held by the obstetrician but we also have to put the person at the centre at the end of the day and we have to think about that woman who needs assistance. While we welcome the work that has been done, a little bit of collaboration and pragmatic thinking are needed on how we can find a solution to this.

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