Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

l raise an issue in respect of which Senator Ahearn campaigned all through last year in order to make sure that the product in question was on the funding list. It is now on the funding list but it may as well not be. The provision is completely impotent. I refer to the alleged reimbursement for Cariban. This product is for women who suffer severe illness and vomiting during pregnancy. The condition for its reimbursement under the scheme is that it must be prescribed by a consultant. However, the reimbursement is subject to the drug payment scheme meaning that the person for whom it is prescribed must pay the first €80. A woman may only see a consultant when she is well advanced in the first trimester, if not at the very end going into the second trimester, so she has to fund the medicine for the first 12 weeks. Even when a person qualifies for the scheme, there is no retrospective reimbursement.

When this matter was raised in the Dáil, the response was from the Minister for Health - I note that the Minister of State here is not in that Department, which is a bit of a disappointment but which is no reflection on him personally - was to implore the drug companies to apply for the licence. However, the drug companies and practitioners are operating lawfully because we have an exempt medicinal product list. The point of that is that it is not necessary to apply for a licence or authorisation but if a consultant underwrites it, and, in other words, takes the risk away from the State in the prescribing of this matter, then where the consultant takes on the risk and carries the legal burden then it will be all right.

Rather than Ministers standing up and calling on the drug companies to apply for this and ensure that it is on the list, it would be better to reappraise the exempt list and assess whether it is suitable. Women can be sick all the time for the duration of the nine months of their pregnancies. The State purports to provide them with financial support but, in actual fact, it does not do so; it provides them with the very minimum. In that context, they might get a box and a half of Cariban capsules every four weeks.