Health minister declines to set out cost data for prescription charge threshold changes, but highlights new reimbursement decision framework
Ireland’s medicines reimbursement system faces fresh scrutiny after the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, declined to provide an Irish deputy with costings for lowering the Drug Payment Scheme threshold, even as the government advances a sweeping new framework with the pharmaceutical industry aimed at speeding patient access to new treatments.
David Cullinane, Sinn Féin’s health spokesman, had asked the minister to set out in tabular form the estimated cost of cutting the DPS threshold – which caps monthly out-of-pocket spending on prescribed medicines – to €60, €40, €20, €15, €10, €5 and zero The written reply offered no such table, citing the “many challenges” of costing future eligibility changes.
Carroll MacNeill instead pointed to recent investment, noting that Budgets 2021 to 2025 added €158mn for new drugs, enabling 270 medicines to reach patients, while Budget 2026 set aside €30mn of a wider €217mn package for new treatments.
Ireland, she said, remains among the EU’s highest health spenders and has the third-highest rate of state-funded pharmaceutical coverage in Europe.
