Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Last month, data from the latest European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations report showed that just 14% of orphan medicines licensed by the European Medicines Agency since 2019 are available to patients in Ireland. This places us 26th of 36 European countries. One such treatment, ravulizumab, remains unavailable in Ireland since its application in 2019, despite it being available in most other European countries. Separate rare disease pathways are now in place in several EU countries of similar size and economy to Ireland, such as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic. The Taoiseach previously served as Minister for Health and he, too, had criticisms of the reimbursement system at that time. We can point to the implementation of a few recommendations in the Mazars report. Realistically, however, when will we see actual reform?

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