Healthcare Policy Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-30 ============================================================ Emer Higgins (FG), Dublin Mid-West I pay tribute to Councillor Ben Ward who, as the Senator said, has been an advocate for this, not just in Carlow but at a national level. I will bring the Senator's feedback and his constructive idea to the attention of the Minister for Health and the Minister for Finance. It is important that it is discussed in the context of upcoming budgetary negotiations. I would like to take this opportunity to thank healthcare workers across the country who deliver exceptional care to the population when they need it the very most. The Minister fully appreciates the importance of improving both affordability and accessibility to healthcare and medicines by patients in Ireland. As noted earlier, we have a brand new suite of measures to support this approach, helping to ensure affordable to quality healthcare and social care services while operating within budgetary constraints. Any adjustment to these measures, including the lowering of the drugs payment scheme, as has been proposed, needs to be carefully considered taking into account the finite resources available and the potential impact on wider healthcare service provision. The State has heavily invested in medicines. State expenditure on medicines has grown substantially since 2021. It now accounts for almost €1 in every €8 of public health spending. Budget 2026 allocated €217 million in additional funding for medicines, and €30 million of this is available for new drugs funding. It should be noted that the year 1 cost of a new drug comes from the allocation for new medicines but once these medicines are approved for reimbursement the full cost of providing them can reach multiples of this initial cost as their uptake increases. That is the budgetary constraints within which we operate Ireland is among the highest spenders on health across the EU, according to the OECD and has the third highest rate of State coverage of pharmaceutical expenditure in Europe. That is down to a lot of our healthcare workers and, indeed, pharmacists who deliver a fantastic service to the population. I thank them and I thank the Senator for raising this issue. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-30/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:53+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-30