Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to respond to the previous speaker by mentioning a big change in healthcare that has occurred in the past two years. There have been increases in the health budget and in the number of people employed in the health service. The cutbacks we had to endure for the first four years after we took office in 2011 are on longer happening. I will mention some figures. The number of people working in the health service has increased by 13,000 since 2014. Those people are employed across the board. There are questions to be asked about proportionality in respect of the new people who have been taken on. I have taken this up with the Minister for Health and the HSE. We need to make sure we continue to deliver services. When we look at healthcare in this country, it is interesting to note that life expectancy is continuing to increase. Over the past 15 or 16 years, it has increased by 2.5 years for both men and women. Such issues need to be taken into account. The big challenge we face is to deliver a healthcare system that serves people in all age groups who are young, middle aged or old. I agree with my colleague that there are deficiencies in the system. We need to work to resolve those problems.

I will mention one area that I want to work on. It was interesting to learn at yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, at which various people discussed the evaluation of orphan drugs, that there are between 6,000 and 8,000 different rare diseases. The problem we have in Ireland is that the number of people with a particular rare disease can be quite small. I recently dealt with a case in which ten people in this country would benefit from a new drug that is being brought onto the market by a pharmaceutical company. Our process for dealing with access to medicines, particularly new medicines for the treatment of lung cancer and other forms of cancer, is slow. We need to look towards having a national medicines policy, which is something we are missing. Such a policy is needed to expedite access to medicines in a timely manner. We have fallen behind a number of countries in respect of the time involved in getting access to new medicines. We are behind 13 other western European countries in that regard. We need to work on that. It might be helpful to have a debate on the cost of drugs and pharmaceuticals in this country, compared to other countries. We need to consider how we can make the process more efficient and how we can get value for money as we ensure treatment is provided to those who require assistance.