Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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467. To ask the Minister for Health to set down the savings in 2018 through the four-year deal agreed with the pharmaceutical sector. [30205/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The 2016 Framework Agreement on the Supply and Pricing of Medicines (available at ), between the State and the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), is expected to deliver approximately €600 million in savings from IPHA companies over the four year lifetime of the Agreement and €150 million in savings from non-IPHA companies.

The 2016 Agreement represents clear additional value to the State over previous agreements. For example, the reference basket of countries, used to set drug prices in Ireland, has been expanded from 9 to 14 countries, including lower cost countries. Also, the Agreement now provides for an annual price realignment, so that Irish medicine prices can be reduced in line with price reductions across the reference countries. This will ensure the State achieves better value for money on medicines as prices in other basket countries are adjusted downwards over time. In addition, the Agreement provides for a 30% reduction in the price of biologic medicines when a biosimilar medicine enters the market.

A key focus of this agreement is to achieve lower prices in the face of both demographic pressures on expenditure and the continued development of new medicines, many of which pose affordability challenges to the Irish health service and internationally.

The estimated saving for 2018 from the Agreement is €185 m.