Ceisteanna ó na Comhaltaí Eile - Other Members’ Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11
============================================================

Pádraig O'Sullivan (FF), Cork North-Central

I commend the Minister as she was central to this drug being approved. She met with families, treated them with dignity and gave them hope, and I commend her on that. However, it feels like groundhog day because I know that in three, six or nine months' time, another cohort of patients will be looking for another miracle drug. I have seen children regain their mobility from taking some of these drugs. That is what they do.
The innovation the Minister referred to is phenomenal. Every year, corporation tax collected from pharmaceutical companies amounts to between €7 billion and €10 billion. Even more phenomenal is that we cannot get a good price from these pharmaceutical companies. We cannot get these drugs at a quick pace, which we should. If we are facilitating these large corporations being here, the least we can do is get early access to a reasonably priced drug. If we do not listen to the health argument on this issue, which we have not done for over a decade now, I would make the argument that the jobs the Minister referred to are contingent on us keeping up with innovation. Unfortunately, we have an archaic system that has not changed and kept pace with that innovation. I ask the Minister to press home the issue with the Minister for Health to make sure we get an early access scheme as quickly as possible.

---

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/dail/2026-06-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-11