Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I recognise the importance of timely access for patients to medicines, including new medicines. Supported by €128 million of funding, in the past four years the State has delivered access to 194 new medicines. Of these, 74 were for cancer and 49 were for rare diseases. Budget 2025 allocated €30 million for new medicines, to come from efficiencies to be identified by the HSE.

The Government has introduced a suite of new measures to enhance capacity in the HSE’s pricing and reimbursement system, including 34 additional staff, which is a 100% increase, and a medicines application tracker to increase the transparency and efficiency of the process. Access to medicines requires industry and the State to work together, through timely assessment, reasonable pricing and fully completed health technology assessments. This partnership has already directly benefited patients, for example those with cystic fibrosis and other rare diseases. In this spirit of co-operation, I continue to encourage pharmaceutical companies to submit timely applications for their products so as to increase access for patients with unmet needs. It is also the responsibility of the HSE to improve its efficiency and it has been enabled to do that with the provision of a 100% increasing in staffing in that area.

All medicines are assessed from a clinical, economic and ethical standpoint, with no hierarchy of disease. Upon approval by the European Medicines Agency, applications for reimbursement are assessed by the HSE in the order in which they are received from applicant companies.

As outlined in the programme for Government, as the Deputy correctly identified, consideration will be given to various measures to address access to medicines. As part of this, my Department is looking at reimbursement systems across the European Union, including Belgium. We are working closely with our Benelux partners on access to medicines where we have had some previous success.

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