Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I want to put a little bit of context on this. The State spent more than €3 billion in 2023 providing medicines to patients. We sometimes forget that €3 billion of the health spend goes to providing medicines. That is appropriate but it is a major budgetary consideration as well. With the early access programmes, we have to get the balance right between being able to get access to the drugs and also being able to work out how that programme intersects with the State's ability to negotiate the right price for the drugs.

Regarding Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which the Deputy mentioned, I do not see how the State could be more proactive in trying to support this. On approval from the European Medicines Agency, I asked the CEO of the HSE and the Secretary General of my Department to find ways to support this. The HSE has proactively reached out to the company to ask it to submit an application. I made it my business to speak with the Italian Minister of Health at the EPSCO Council in Luxembourg to ask him to encourage the company to submit an application to Ireland. We will do everything we can because we recognise the life-changing implications of some of these drugs. However, as Minister, I must also point out that we have to get an early access programme right in a way that enables the State to get the best negotiating price for the delivery of drugs for everybody.

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