Weight-loss injections could be made cheaper by end of the year, Minister says
Some drugs used for weight loss could be free or have their cost capped as early this year, Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has confirmed.
She also vowed a crackdown on vapes and to 'eradicate' tobacco pouches.
Weight loss jab Mounjaro, which is also used to treat type two diabetics, became available in the UK this week under the NHS.
In response to questions on whether Ireland would support the free rollout of the drug for Irish weight-loss patients, Minister Carroll MacNeill confirmed that it would be available through the HSE's reimbursement schemes as soon as the last quarter of 2025.
Saxenda, another injection that can be used for weight loss, has been on the scheme since January 2023.
This includes the Medical Card Scheme, where patients receive their prescription for free and the Drugs Payment Scheme, where the cost of prescriptions are capped at €80 per month.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said: 'Saxenda is available under the reimbursement scheme already.
'Mountjaro is going through the reimbursement process so I'd expect an outcome of that maybe quarter four of this year, quarter one of next year.
'But it's already the case that one of those drugs is available under the reimbursement scheme and therefore is available to medical card patients.'
Ms Carroll MacNeill, who was speaking at the World Conference on Tobacco Control, also vowed that Ireland will crack down on coloured and flavoured vapes and attempt to 'eradicate' tobacco pouches.
Despite Cabinet approving plans in September 2024 to ban disposable vapes and flavours, there is still no date for the implementation of the plans.
However, the Fine Gael Minister for Dun Laoghaire said that the Government will prioritise the new rule as part of Ireland's EU Presidency from July 2026.
She said: 'The nicotine companies find different ways of trying to - now that the tobacco has been so stamped down - get children addicted to nicotine.
'Why there needs to be, like a coconut pineapple flavour [vape] is absolutely beyond me. Why it needs to match a young girl's handbag or any of those different attractive things to socialise and normalise what is essentially an addiction to a drug.
'The nicotine pouches are particularly invidious and have the capacity to get very high doses of nicotine to children in very subtle ways, but very, very quickly. We're working to try to eradicate them.
'We're trying to reopen the tobacco directive and have a focus of that as our of our EU presidency to reopen the tobacco directive to recognise that actually the world has moved on since that was agreed, that it's not just about tobacco, it's about the other nicotine projects.
'The Taoiseach will be helping me to make sure that that's a priority for Ireland for the presidency.
'One of the issues there is where one country takes lots of steps to ban different products. It comes so easily across the border from another EU member states that we have to take a harmonised approach on it from a public health perspective.'
Elsewhere, Minister Carroll MacNeill defended naming the new National Children's Hospital 'The National Children's Hospital'.
She said it followed 'engagement with the youth advisory groups, with parents, with patients, and that is the name that they chose'.
She confirmed that there was a 'pretty nominal' cost to coming up with the name but could not confirm what it was.
The Irish Mirror submitted queries to the Department of Health on the cost.
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