Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy very much. I agree with him. I do not accept that either. We are a nation whose population deserves rapid access to these medicines. We have to strike a balance. We hear advocacy from the pharmaceutical industry regularly citing lengths of time. It has a particular view. Obviously, it wants Ireland to spend as much money as quickly as possible on its products. When I talk to people working within the service, the view is more nuanced. They say Ireland does quite well in accessing some drugs, and is well ahead of other European countries, but that it is not universal in terms of access to all medicines. To that end, the Deputy will be aware there was a Mazars report done some years ago which looked at the process and it found several ways we could improve it. One is around transparency of the process. I do not believe transparency has been where it needs to be for patients or indeed for the industry, and the other is in the speed with which we can approve the new medicines.

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