Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept the Deputy's position. It is a smaller number of people. We know from the clinicians that in many cases they are nervous about prescribing, even though the MCAP is in place for the unlicensed products. As I said, we will do a clinical review of the HRB findings. I am very open to expanding the programme. We will be led by the clinical view on this.

What is interesting though is that while I take the Deputy's point that there are only 55 patients, which is a low number, we are seeing a much higher number now on licensed cannabis medicine products. For example, as he will be aware, Epidiolex is one of the medicines used for seizures associated with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, among others. More than 144 patients have been prescribed on that and, therefore, the clinical community would appear to be more engaged with the licensed products.

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