Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This legislation is long overdue. To comment generally on this matter, it is also interesting that the recent survey by the National Consumer Agency, NCA, is frightening in that there is a huge variation in what pharmacies are charging. In one case the lowest price for a drug was €16.62 while the highest price was €49.69 for the same quantity, a difference of 199%. There is quite a variation between different areas of the country, in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. That survey raises the issue about whether people are aware they can move pharmacy and get better value.

A major concern is that where somebody who has no medical card is having to buy medication with a total cost in excess of €144, only the receipt for €144 is being furnished to them, not a full breakdown of the cost of medication. For instance, if the total cost of medication for the month is €500 they are not given the cost of that. I am extremely concerned, in particular with the price variation in that regard. The people who are not on medical cards are all taxpayers. They are entitled to get full details on what the taxpayer is having to pay. The first €144 is not refundable but anything over €144 is being paid by the taxpayer and this is one of the reasons we have allowed the cost of medication to go so high, because of lack of accountability.

I have also raised the issue of the cost of medication in hospitals. We need to visit this issue. We still have a very high cost of medication in hospitals. We should be able to do a lot more regarding getting medication at far better value for money compared to what we are getting now. It is a huge bill on our health service. It has not reduced to any substantial degree in the past five years. I accept the Department has done some work on this matter and that there will be savings over the next three years but we have not made enough progress in this regard.

The misinformation out there on generic drugs needs to be clarified. There is a clear provision in the legislation. The chief medical officer of one hospital contacted me in the past two weeks to express concern about this Bill.

When there is a concern that one cannot transfer from a branded product to a generic product, because of the particular level of care a patient requires, he was not aware that provision was available to him. I found that very strange. It was another public representative who referred him to me and I was able to refer him to the section of the Bill and gave him a copy of the Bill, as recently as two weeks ago. The amount of medication the particular unit would prescribe would be high because of the type of patient being dealt with. It is extremely important that we get information out to general practitioners and also to people who are involved in the management of the drugs programmes within hospitals. The Department and the HSE have a major role to play in getting that information out and that people are accountable on that issue. There is another issue I wish to raise.