Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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95. To ask the Minister for Health the progress her Department has made in honouring the Programme for Government commitment that an early access programme for medicines would be established; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34979/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I recognise the importance of timely access for patients to new medicines.

Supported by 128 million euros of funding, in the last four years, the State has delivered access to 194 new medicines. Seventy-four (74) of these were for cancer and forty-nine (49) of these were for rare diseases.

Budget 2025 allocated 30 million euro for new medicines to come from efficiencies to be identified by the HSE.

The Government has introduced a suite of new measures to enhance capacity in the HSE’s pricing and reimbursement system including thirty-four (34) additional staff and a medicines application tracker to increase transparency of the process. Access to medicines requires industry and the State to work together, through timely assessment, and reasonable pricing with fully completed HTAs (Health Technology Assessments). This partnership has directly benefited patients for example those with cystic fibrosis and other rare diseases.

In this spirit of co-operation, I continue to encourage pharmaceutical companies to submit timely applications for their products so as to increase access for patients with unmet needs.

All medicines are assessed from a clinical, economic and ethical standpoint, with no hierarchy of disease. Upon approval by the European Medicines Agency, applications for reimbursement are assessed by the HSE in the order in which they are received from applicant companies.

As outlined in the Programme for Government, consideration will be given to various measures to address access to medicines. As part of this my Department is looking at reimbursement systems across the European Union, including Belgium. We are working closely with our Beneluxa partners on access to medicines where we have had previous success.