Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State. I will point out a few things relative to the script she has there. The first thing is that we are spending €3 billion on drugs. That is a fact; I cannot dispute it. It is likely to be €4 billion before too long and it is going to continue to increase as the innovations in drugs and treatment continue to progress. That should be a good thing because it saves people going into hospitals or into long-term care, and it saves us by giving people the opportunity to be productive in society and partake if their ailment is identified early enough and they can get the appropriate treatment. It is just a fact that we are going to spend more and more on drugs into the future. That needs to be embraced because with regard to the innovation that is out there, it is eye-opening to see what we can do and what we can treat.

The issue I have regards the assessments. I am surprised that the Department did not make any attempt at putting its own figures with respect to the figures I quoted. The truth of the fact is it does not have them, or if it does have them it never discloses them. It is concerning to me that the Department of Health would not have access to those timelines. If the Department is going to dispute the timelines here by the EFPIA, I would like to think it has its own statistics and waiting times but it does not have them, and I find that very concerning.

The one big difficulty I have with this is that whether people in this House know it or not, we are actually overseeing the implementation of a two-tier health system by proxy. What I mean by that is I am lucky enough to have private health insurance, and there are people in this country today who, depending on their provider and the cover they have, can access these very expensive drugs. People on the public system, if those drugs are still awaiting reimbursement, cannot access those drugs and that is not a health system we should be standing over. That is why, in the programme for Government, we were happy to see the inclusion of early access programmes for certain drugs for certain cancer sufferers, and we got a commitment that the overall reimbursement process for drugs would be reviewed. The one thing I would ask the Minister of State to take away to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, tonight is to ensure that the commitments in the programme for Government are initiated now, and we are not having this conversation in two years' time again, trying to instigate them at that point.

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