Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To return to the drugs issue, it is important that we have an honest debate on it. We are paying out €2.6 billion on drugs and pharmaceuticals per annum. In the period from 2000 to 2010, the cost of pharmaceuticals went from €570 million to over €2 billion. It was as though we were writing blank cheques. If we want to have a debate on this issue, let us have an overall debate about why it is costing more per head of population for drugs and pharmaceuticals than in any other European country.

On the organ donation issue, we need to compare ourselves with Norway. There are about 2,000 people on dialysis in this country now. There are only about 370 people on dialysis in Norway at any one time. That is because of the policy it implemented in the late 1990s and early 2000s of employing the necessary number of consultants. We can talk about organ donation all day but we have to have the necessary people there to do the work. That is where the fundamental problem arose in the last 15 years. We have not been able to recruit the people. We deliberately missed out. When we had money to do it, we did not recruit them between 2000 and 2010 and that is what we now need to focus on. If we want to bring down the number of people on dialysis, we need the experts to do the work. That is what should be the priority. Let us have a debate on that and on the cost of pharmaceuticals in this country.