Pádraig O'Sullivan

So when people often comment that it's OK for Germany and France and the bigger economies to approve things faster because they have a bigger population, more resources, it doesn't stack up that we're behind all those similar sized countries.

I'm not here to throw digs at Michael Barry or the NCP, but on another station recently, he did say a bigger budget doesn't necessarily mean better value.

Okay, so he's a very difficult job.

He does have a limited budget, but we need to factor in, and this is probably a decision for the Minister and wider government,

Cumulatively, pharmaceutical industry here pays the bones of 8 to 10 billion depending on the year on corporation tax.

That's a massive amount of money.

There's anywhere up to 75,000 jobs dependent on the industry.

If people aren't going to listen to the health motivation on this thing, if they're not going to try and reach out to these families that are crying out for these medicines.

maybe they listen to the industry and the jobs and the investment and the innovation that's required.

The real problem we have here is there's so much innovation, there's so many new drugs, like basically every new cancer drug that's been discovered is so targeted.

In essence, it's a rare disease drug.

It needs to reform.

He's meeting on Monday in Cork.

Okay.

So where is this going to go?

Well, what I'm asking, not just the Taoiseach, but what I'm asking the drugs group, because ultimately the recommendation that the NCP will make will go to the drugs group and they are meeting sometime in the middle of June.

I would be asking that this drug, as well as a few others, they'll have an agenda, would be considered as urgently at that meeting.

And if not June, then at very least the next meeting, which might possibly be July or August.

There's more and more resources gone into this area in the last few years, to be fair.

For the first time in...