Ms Nessa Childers:

I thank Senator Crown. The clinical trials directive is now being redone and is going through the European Parliament. It may go through overseen by the Irish Presidency. This is where MEPs can interact in all kinds of ways with interested and concerned people. We can put down amendments to these directives if we think the legislation is going in the wrong direction. I already have my eye on the clinical trials directive. The rapporteur is a British socialist MEP, which is interesting when Senator Crown is talking about the situation in the UK with regard to clinical trials. We will be monitoring that very carefully because although the clinical trials directive is very technical in some ways, it will impact on many people with cancer. There are many technicalities. Senator Crown was very concerned that things will go wrong with the harmonisation process. We need to be very careful about who could be harmed by a lack of access to trialled drugs and how quickly they come out of trials.

Data protection is another thorny issue. I attended a large conference recently where that issue was discussed. There is no easy answer to it but I imagine it will be dealt with one way or another. Senator Crown referred to the mismatch between the cost of drugs and how much they cost to develop and the inflection point. There seem to be so many issues relating to the price we pay for drugs in Ireland. I do not understand what the real issue is. The troika has seemingly met with the heads of the large pharmaceutical companies. I suspect that some of the reasons for this result from what goes on behind closed doors. Ireland needs to deal with that issue. I do not understand why it is so difficult. We have done our best to manoeuvre the legislation on the transparency directive regarding the pricing of medicines through the Council. It is still quite contentious. Member states do not like their competences being interfered with this area so it will go to the Council in October.

With regard to the tobacco industry, we need to create a debate about whether anyone has the right to sell products that do this to children. The SOS 2030 initiative is very interesting. By 2030, perhaps we can change practices in countries where agriculture is partly based on growing tobacco. That is very difficult. These countries get very worried about this and lobby against it. It is not easy because they will tell one that thousands of jobs will be lost. That may not be true but some way must be found at member state level to negotiate our way out of tobacco being legal. The European Parliament has 736 MEPs, including 12 Croatians. We must find compromises all the time for everything, including tobacco. Otherwise the legislation fails and does not go to plenary and the whole thing falls apart. We do not want that happening with the tobacco directive.

In respect of the training of medical practitioners, there is a directive called the professional qualifications directive. It does not relate to my committee. It is being dealt with by the Internal Market and consumer protection committee but I have been overseeing it. I am holding a seminar with a Romanian MEP about doctors leaving their own countries and going to work in other countries and the shortages this causes. There is a problem with the infrastructure in health services. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that. The professional qualifications directive is supposed to deal with this. The Irish Medical Organisation visited us in Brussels. It is quite controversial in ways I will not go into because it is not my area but there are controversies regarding the harmonisation of qualifications in different European countries.