Funding for new medicines in Budget 2025 would offer hope and promise to thousands of patients in Ireland

• IPHA members expect to make applications for reimbursement for 36 medicines in 2025, benefitting as many as 3,700 patients in Ireland.
• The funding of new medicines in Budget 2025 will allow for the continuous flow of new medicines which can make significant life-enhancing changes to patient care in Ireland.
• IPHA is ready and willing to partner with Government to achieve faster access to all the medicines Ireland’s patients need.

Ahead of Budget 2025, the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA), which represents the international research-based biopharmaceutical industry, reiterates the importance of funding new medicines which are an integral and vital part of our healthcare system.

Advances in medicines development is steadily growing. To ensure that patients in Ireland can access these therapeutic advances, it is vital that a direct allocation for new medicines is provided for again in 2025 as was done in 2021, 2022, 2023 and eventually in 2024.

For 2025, IPHA members expect to make applications for reimbursement for 36 medicines which, according to most recent estimates, would benefit as many as 3,700 patients in Ireland.  These medicines would improve the standard of care for patients suffering from a number of diseases such as cancer – breast cancer, leukaemia, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma and others – Alzheimer’s, stroke, women’s health conditions, migraine, dermatitis, asthma, ulcerative colitis, type 2 diabetes and liver disease.  Along with benefitting thousands of patients, these life-enhancing medicines will also positively impact the lives of their families and carers.

It is estimated that an allocation in the order of €25 million in new development funding for new medicines in 2025 is required to allow patients in Ireland access these new life-enhancing treatments.

Budget 2024 initially allocated zero-funding for new medicines. Thankfully, this decision was reversed by the Government last December with €20 million allocated for new medicines and a further €10 million to be made available through savings. As a consequence, by 1^st July 2024, 20 new medicines – both IPHA (13) and non IPHA (7) – have already been reimbursed by the HSE. Current data indicates that at least 700 patients and their families and carers are benefitting from 15 of those new medicines. Further positive reimbursement decisions this year should benefit several thousand patients more.

IPHA Chief Executive Oliver O’Connor said “We believe that there needs to be a clear policy to plan for and fund the continuous flow of life-enhancing new medicines in 2025 and over multiple years. Efficiencies are both possible and desirable to make the medicines spend sustainable but alone they cannot provide sufficient funding for the uptake of new medicines. Annual new developments Exchequer funding remains a necessity.”

“IPHA member companies are actively delivering significant savings to the State on an annual basis via the Framework Agreement we agreed in 2021 and which expires in September 2025, within the Budget year now being considered. This Agreement has delivered more than €400m in savings in its first two years of implementation, well above the anticipated overall savings of between €600-€700 million for the full four-year period. We remain ready and willing to partner with Government to achieve certainty for clinicians and patients and to work with the HSE to bring newly-authorised medicines to the Irish healthcare system as quickly as possible.”

ENDS