Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I will walk through the steps regarding where this is now and where it is going. As I said, the company applied for reimbursement just in the last few weeks. That application is now undergoing a rapid review at the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics. The NCPE target for that is four weeks but it does not always meet it because it assesses many new medicines. Yet, typically, the target for a rapid review is approximately four weeks. Following the rapid review, it may recommend a full health technology assessment, HTA, which takes a bit longer. The National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics may not - but I hope it will - recommend that this goes to a full HTA. Then, it would go to the corporate pharmaceutical unit, CPU, in the HSE. As part of the budget for this year, we were asked to sanction additional staff for the CPU for exactly this reason, namely, to speed up the process so we could assess more new medicines at the same time.

I will continue my reply in my next response to the Deputy.

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