Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her response. I ask her to ask the Minister, or the HSE directly, to sit down with the manufacturer and negotiate on the price of the drug. I understand the processes involved, the limited resources and everything else around it. However, can the Minister of State imagine what it must be like to be patient No. 82 in this situation? I cited the example of the 30 year old patient earlier. We are not playing with numbers here, but with people's lives. If the HSE sits down with the manufacturer and works out a price, then it can be agreed, as has happened in many other cases.

The effectiveness of the drug treatment is borne out by the fact that it is approved in other countries. It cannot be different for an Irish person living in London or somewhere else in the UK than it is for someone living here. We cannot force patients to go abroad. I am no friend of drug manufacturers, and they need to decrease their prices, but we cannot expect them to continue providing treatment free of charge indefinitely either. There has to be some fairness there. I ask the HSE to sit down with the drug company at the earliest possible moment and negotiate the price, within weeks rather than months. I am concerned that we are now going into the holiday period. Is there is any way this could be done before the end of July, so that the uncertainty will be removed for these patients going into August and September?