Latest news with #PeterHayes
News.com.au
06-07-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Nuclear nightmare that is lurking on Australia's doorstep
Is Australia sleeping on a nuclear nightmare? That's what our leading North Korean experts claim. With all eyes on the Middle East's boiling tensions, there's been a blind spot: the nuclear threat looming much closer to home. North Korea is arming up. Thanks to its new deal with Russia, the rogue state is rapidly modernising its nuclear arsenal. Kim Jong-un now has the power to blow up half the planet. And not so long back, he painted a nuclear target on Australia's back. But is such an attack likely? Even possible? Or just more propaganda? However credible his threat, the Supreme Leader has been knocking back US President Donald Trump's invitation to discuss denuclearisation. And the strikes on Iran haven't helped. It's fuelling fears Australia could be dragged into war with one of the world's largest armies. 'Most likely war' Professor Peter Hayes, the founder of the international Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, believes North Korea is the gravest military threat facing Australia. 'It's the most likely war prospect Australia faces,' Professor Hayes tells 'This is not hypothetical, this is here and now and it's our most dangerous regional military contingency.' 'I don't think we really have any realistic or plausible plans to deal with it.' Professor Hayes has travelled to North Korea seven times to help bring security to the region. While North Korea has missiles that could reach Australia, Professor Hayes says its unlikely to waste its weapons on us when there's limited benefit. Instead, the risk lies with an implosion of inter-Korean tensions. 'All it would take is an incident like a hostage or assassination attempt and they're off to the races,' says Professor Hayes. In such a case, our proximity would mean we're the first one to get the call. 'As part of the UN Command, Australia would be called upon almost certainly from day one to support the efforts.' Australia would be obligated to send air and sea support, pulling us into striking distance of Kim's formidable arsenal of mass destruction. And havoc would be wrought back home. 'One of the first targets of the North would be the South Korean oil refineries where Australia imports about one third of its refined product.' 'This would drive prices extremely high and cut off our supply. We'd feel it very quickly.' 'Korea is much more important than is generally understood by the Australian public and policymakers.' Go the distance Time and again, we've underestimated North Korea. We thought they'd never survive global sanctions. We thought they'd never acquire a nuclear arsenal. And now, we think they don't know how to use it. 'It's one thing having missiles that go up and down, but that's completely different to having deliverables over intercontinental range,' says Professor Hayes. But thanks to an old friend, they may have recently found the missing pieces. In exchange for providing troops in Russia's war against Ukraine, North Korea is believed to be seeking Russian missile and space technology. Professor Hayes says Pyongyang's newly strengthened ties with Moscow are helping 'fill in the blanks' of their capabilities – including warhead delivery. 'If the Russians were helping them address that problem, that would be extremely valuable,' he says. 'However it would also be extremely provocative to do that with regard to Washington and Tokyo and Beijing.' 'None of them would look kindly on Russia doing that, and so for that reason, I think they probably aren't.' 'Legitimate target' Professor Clive Williams is a former Australian Army Military Intelligence officer who now directs Canberra's Terrorism Research Centre. Professor Williams, an expert on North Korea who travelled to the secretive state in 2015, agrees it's unlikely we'll see a scenario where North Korea would bomb Australia directly. But there's at least one reason they would want to. 'The regime has always felt threatened by the US,' Professor Clive tells 'While a direct missile strike on Australian soil is unlikely, North Korea may see US strategic military facilities in Australia such as Pine Gap as a legitimate target.' Pine Gap, a US-Australian defence facility located near Alice Springs, is a critical factor in US wars. Professor Clive believes the recent strikes on Iran's nuclear program would embolden the Kim regime to cling to its nuclear arsenal. 'The bombing of Iran would have underlined to Kim the need for nuclear weapons as a deterrent.' Despite speculation the regime would be starved into submission without access to international trading, North Korea is stronger than ever. It's estimated to now have around 50 nuclear warheads and enough fissile material for as many as 90. This includes new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). If launched with nuclear warheads, these could cause widespread destruction. The Hwasong-15, North Korea's furthest-reaching ICBM, could travel about 13,000km, putting most of the world within range. Including all of Australia. They have also tested hypersonic missiles, which can fly at several times the speed of sound and at low altitude to escape radar detection. As well as others launched from submarines. That's not to mention boasting the world's fourth-largest military, with nearly 1.3 million. Lastly, this army is becoming more mobile. 'They're more mobile, survivable, and capable,' says Professor Clive. 'We've always underestimated their capacity to innovate under sanctions, especially in areas like nuclear technology.' 'It just goes to show what can be done if a nation's resources are focused on a perceived threat.' Chequered history Australia and North Korea share a hostile history. We're still officially at war with the rogue state, despite most of the fighting ending with the signing of an armistice back in July 1953. And in 2017, things looked like they could fire up again. At the time, the regime threatened nuclear retaliation after we announced North Korea would be subject to further Australian sanctions. North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman at the time with the following thinly-veiled threat. 'If Australia persists in following the US moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and remains a shock brigade of the US master, this will be a suicidal act of coming within the range of the nuclear strike of the strategic force of the DPRK. However likely such an attack is, there's no reason to think we're no longer a target. Prospect of peace Despite the alarming prospect of war, there's still hope for peace. While Australia has the power to play a key role in the latter outcome, Professor Hayes claims we're not doing enough for diplomacy. 'If you're pitch perfect with perfect timing, you can move the world. That's what middle powers should be doing,' he says. 'We don't seem to want to do that very much, at least not in relation to Korea.' 'This is perhaps the saddest aspect of Australian policy.' Professor Clive believes reunification is in fact in the North's sights. 'The North seems to believe it will eventually reintegrate with the South,' he says. 'But only on the North's terms,' says Professor Clive. Whatever outcome the future holds, Australia will be heavily impacted.
The Wire
04-07-2025
- Business
- The Wire
Profit in Persecution: What the IG Farben Trials Reveal About Industry's Role in Genocide
The Holocaust as we know and recognise today was carefully prepared for through the Nazification of the literature and the arts, the education system, the culture wars and contributed to by multiple Nazified academic disciplines, from anthropology to physics. During the Nuremberg Trials (1945-46), which remain iconic for the prosecution of the Nazi officers for their role in 'crimes against humanity', evidentiary documents drew attention to multiple examples of the genocidal project, an interdisciplinary project of murderous intent. But what has not received much attention is a second set of trials in which equally incriminating evidence, from a different field, was produced. A set of 12 trials, now known as the IG Farben trial, was held during 1947-1948. The Farben trial opened the eyes of the world (which subsequently, of course, shut them) to the alliance between a genocidal state, capital, science and technology and the industry. The purpose of the industrialists' trial was to show how German industrialists were an integral part of the Nazi regime. As historians note, the all-encompassing Four-Year Plan to revitalise the German economy came to be called the 'IG Farben Plan'. After the trial IG Farben was segmented into three companies, Bayer, Hoescht and BASF. Profits before persecution One of the leading historians on Nazi Germany, Peter Hayes, titles his 2025 book, Profits and Persecution: German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust. In this he notes the deep ambivalence of the German corporate world towards the Jews during Hitler's rise to power: they did not quite want to throw out their extremely useful Jewish workforce, but also simultaneously 'harboured increasing animosity toward Jews'. Carl Bosch, the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and Chairman of the IG Farben Board of Directors, in fact met Hitler in early 1933 and protested that the firing of Jewish scientists and researchers would harm German science and industry – Hitler, apparently, gave Bosch a cold hearing. After Hitler seized power, the bankers and business leaders were increasingly divided, at least initially. Some were supportive of an official antagonism towards the Jews, while others saw antisemitism as economically unviable. IG Farben's influence, notes Richard J. Evans in The Third Reich in Power, had a major influence in the government's policies from 1933, even going so far as to establish an Army Liaison Office in 1935, to enable the firm to meet the military requirements of the regime. It became increasingly clear that 'industry's profits from the regime's promotion of rearmament and autarky' (Hayes) would far outstrip its profits from conventional production and products. The tie-in of war and industry had become formalised for, in Richard Evans' words in The Coming of the Third Reich, 'companies like Siemens and IG Farben…were more willing to compromise'. A document, 'The Most Important Chemical Plants in Poland' had been prepared in advance in their offices, and updated by salespersons in the months leading up to the invasion. The industry, alongside the military, was gearing up for war. This is how, immediately after the invasion, IG Farben's teams were able to move in and capture the ear-marked plants in Poland. Such takeovers were part of the Four-Year Plan which called for 'a mutual integration and linkage of interests' between Germany, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Denmark – clearly, 'mutual integration' was a euphemism. Profits in persecution Popular views of the start of the war suggest that many in Germany were caught unawares by the rapid developments. But the industrial houses were perhaps not. It is believed that Dr Claus Ungewitter, Reich commissioner for chemistry at the Economics Ministry and a hardened Nazi, had informed IG Farben's Georg von Schnitzler of imminent war. Years later von Schnitzler recorded: 'We of the IG were well aware of this fact.… In June or July 1939, the IG and all heavy industries were completely mobilised for the invasion of Poland'. During the course of the war, IG Farben and other firms appointed agents to purchase mining and industrial facilities at ridiculously low prices in Crete, Greece and the nations the Nazis conquered. French chemical firms captured most of the mining and iron-and-steel works in Alsace-Lorraine. Numerous banks across the conquered regions, especially Jewish owned ones, were taken over. After the conquest of France, its famous dyestuffs industry was choked due to a lack of supplies. It is easy to guess what happened next. IG Farben presented the French with a plan: a single Franco-German dye company in which the German group would hold the principal stake, controlling all export activity. IG Farben established a buna (synthetic rubber) plant at Monowitz, and since Monowitz was also one of the Auschwitz network, a neat alignment of economics, industry and extermination in a spatial triad emerged. The construction of Farben's Monowitz plant was made possible through the supply of labour from the neighbourhood camps. Here industry was inextricably linked to both the war effort on one side and the inhuman exploitation of forced labour on the other – eventually this would be one of the key themes in the IG Farben trials. As Hayes puts it, 'naming a leading German goods producer that did not become complicit in the slave system is difficult'. The rhetoric of industry and profits was never separate from either jingoistic nationalism or the racial economy of war. In 1941, when the first 'transports' began, Otto Ambros of IG Farben, said in a speech: With the Auschwitz project, IG Farben has designed a plan for a new enterprise of giant proportions. It is determined to do everything in its power to build up a virile enterprise that will be able to shape its environment in the same way as many plants in west and central Germany do. In this manner IG Farben fulfills a high moral duty to ensure, with a mobilization of all its resources, that this industrial foundation becomes a firm cornerstone for a powerful and healthy Germanism in the East. The markers of Nazi ideology were all in place: race, national identity, virility. Naturally, profits went up. Hayes estimates : IG Farben's sales and gross profits rose sharply in 1933 and roughly doubled by 1936, those of its explosives subsidiary, the Dynamit AG Troisdorf, more than quadrupled… It comes as no surprise then that considerable research time, personnel and funding at IG Farben was directed at developing different kinds of chemicals for the war-and-extermination efforts. IG Farben was about to embark on the production of nerve gases. The aforementioned Ambros was also the head of Albert Speer's special committee responsible for poison gas. By 1942, chemical agents, Sarin and Tabun, were in production at Breslau. The 'facilities', so to speak, for research and development at the camps were excellent. As Diarmuid Jeffreys puts it in his detailed study of IG Farben, Hell's Cartel: The experiments at Auschwitz were evidently part of a much wider research program involving IG pharmaceutical preparations and the SS. Certainly, typhus and other fever drugs developed by the IG's Behring-werke serological department at Marburg were routinely tested on inmates at Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The IG also became involved in a secret SS program to develop a method of chemical castration for use in Russia. Then, in 1941, an accidental discovery of a chemical pesticide's powerful toxicity – it killed a cat that had wandered into the room in minutes – made the SS wonder if this pesticide could be employed to kill humans as well. And this is how Zyklon-B, manufactured by an IG Farben subsidiary, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung (Degesch) enters the Nazi's genocidal imagination, and the modern world's lexicon as well. In September 1941 it was first tested on Greek and then Red Army prisoners. Zyklon-B passed with flying colours: a new weapon had just been found. March 20, 1942 is the agreed-upon date when Zyklon-B was first employed in Bunker I and II in Auschwitz to kill the prisoners. But this was not all. Nazi industry – and I use the term in both its senses – also developed in other directions. Topf and Sons patented the crematoria, or ovens, in which the gassed bodies were burnt (the plans for these crematoria, drawn up by Kurt Prüfer, survive). Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) provided the electrical systems for at least two of the installations at Birkenau camp. Before the gas chambers of Auschwitz, gas vans were pressed into service for the same ends at Chelmno, and these vans were manufactured by the firm of Hoch- und Tiefbau AG. Financiers, banks and insurers also flourished, and Allianz insured most of the workshops of SS-owned companies. Subcontracted firms like Mannesmann Röhrenwerke also expanded their business. The gold extracted from the fillings in the teeth of the gas victims had to be processed, and the firm of Degussa was given this commission (workers in their testimonies recount how teeth and gums were still attached to the bits of gold fillings, which they then had to separate). It is estimated that Degussa earned 2 million Reichsmarks between 1939 and 1945 from this processing alone. In fact, it is calculated that 95% of the firm's gold 'collection' came from such victim-loot. As a consequence, employment at these firms also went up, and Hayes in his earlier work, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (1987) records that 'the work force of the [IG Farben] combine increased by about 45% in the first four full years of fighting, cresting in 1943 at 333,000'. The killing itself was not very expensive: the cost of the Zyklon-B to gas about 900,000 people at Auschwitz, 1942 to 1944, amounted to a mere two German pennies, or one US cent, per corpse. Industry on trial By late 1944, with the outcome of the war a foregone conclusion, the industrial bigwigs began to worry. What would happen to them once their collaboration with the Nazis was revealed, especially in the wake of the accounts of Auschwitz becoming public (the BBC began issuing broadcasts about Auschwitz around the same time)? August von Knieriem, the IG's chief counsel, drew up a paper examining the prospects for the company after the war. When papers detailing the IG Farben works in Auschwitz, including one titled 'Planning the New Auschwitz Works', were seized from its bosses in 1945, the firm's complicity was already established and in September 1945, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a report detailing this. When the charges were filed, the indictments were fairly detailed, as documented in the UN War Crime Commission's Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals: Vol. X: The IG Farben and Krupp Trials (1949): [IG Farben] abused its slave workers by subjecting them, among other things, to excessively long, arduous and exhausting work, utterly disregarding their health or physical condition. The sole criterion of the right to live or die was the production efficiency of said inmates. By virtue of inadequate rest, inadequate food, and because of inadequate quarters (which consisted of a bed of polluted straw, shared by from two to four inmates), many died at their work or collapsed from serious illness there contracted. With the first sign of a decline in the productivity of any such workers, although caused by illness or exhaustion, such workers would be subject to the well-known Selektion. Selektion, in its simplest definition, meant that if, upon a cursory examination, it appeared that the inmate would not be restored within a few days to full productive capacity, he was considered expendable and was sent to the Birkenau camp of Auschwitz for the customary extermination … The working conditions at the Farben Buna plant were so severe and unendurable that very often inmates were driven to suicide by either dashing through the guards and provoking death by rifle shot or hurling themselves into the high-tension electrically charged barbed fence… It also said: Farben … played a major role in Germany's programme for acquisition by conquest. It used its expert technical knowledge and resources to plunder and exploit the chemical and related industries of Europe, to enrich itself from unlawful acquisitions; to strengthen the German war machine and to assure the subjugation of the conquered countries to the German economy. To that end, it conceived, initiated and prepared detailed plans for the acquisition by it, with the aid of German military force, of the chemical industries of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, Russia, and other countries. None of the defendants admitted their guilt at the trial. But the verdict was unprecedented. Curtis Shake, one of the judges, read out the following: Hitler was the dictator. It was natural that the people of Germany listened to and read his utterances in the belief that he spoke the truth … Can we say that the common man of Germany believed less?… The average citizen of Germany, be he professional man, farmer, or industrialist, could scarcely be charged by these events with knowledge that the rulers of the Reich were planning to plunge Germany into a war of aggression. We reach the conclusion that common knowledge of Hitler's plans did not prevail in Germany ... The prosecution is confronted with the difficulty of establishing knowledge on the part of the defendants, not only of the rearmament of Germany but also that the purpose of rearmament was to wage aggressive war.… In this sphere the evidence degenerates from proof to mere conjecture. 24 members of the firm were arraigned, 13 were found guilty, indicted and sentenced to – believe it or not – one to eight years imprisonment. Justice Paul Hebert filed his dissent saying: The record of IG Farbenindustrie, during the period under examination in this lengthy trial, has been shown to be an ugly record which went far beyond the activities of normal business. From a maze of statistical and detailed information in the record emerges a picture of gigantic proportions depicting feverish activity by Farben to rearm Germany…The defendants … cannot, in my opinion, avoid sharing a large part of the guilt for numberless crimes against humanity. We now know that, besides the desire to bring the Nazis to justice for crimes against humanity, other political factors were in play by the time of the IG Farben trial. There was an American insistence on economic recovery over retribution by 1947, when the trial began. IG Farben was quick to cash in on this insistence. As Mark E. Spicka notes in his essay on the trial in the volume Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg: While the trial of I.G. Farben was ongoing in 1947–48, the firm began to play an increasingly large role in the American plans for West Germany's reconstruction. As a result, the American commitment in Washington and at the level of the American occupation zone to prosecute the I. G. Farben executives and to break the firm into small, inefficient units began to fade. The prosecution's focus on IG Farben's crimes against peace, which were more difficult to establish than if the charges were about slavery and exploitation, resulted in the failure to obtain fuller conviction, he notes. There was, then, a definite wheeling-dealing at work, as also a new ideology of economic reconstruction, that produced this odd verdict. No war is without its profits. The IG Farben trial, even if the results were unexpected and tame, revealed the close alliance of the war machine and the industry – something we have seen repeated endlessly since then. There is an economics of war, and the industrial houses, fuelled in 1939-1945, not just the Nazi state and jingoism, but literally the extermination camps too. When the industry aids and abets a genocidal, or even a totalitarian regime and participates, as it did in the Nazi years, in suppression, exploitation and so-called national aspirations, we can see clearly, there is profit in persecution.
BBC News
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Robbie Williams' Bath gig 'chaotic' premium ticket holders say
Premium ticket holders say they feel let down after paying double the price for a "chaotic" experience at a Robbie Williams sold-out event on Friday was the first of two performances to be held at the Royal Crescent in Bath, Somerset. The singer performed to 15,000 people in what was described as "the most intimate show of his tour".But those who splashed out on a Golden Circle ticket said they did not receive the VIP experience they were promised and were instead "crammed" into the promoters Senbla said the issue has been "rectified for this evening's concert by putting into place stronger communications lines between our security teams and event staff". A Golden Circle ticket cost about double the price of general claimed to offer a spacious standing experience, access to a VIP hospitality area, a dedicated entrance and food and drinks before the show. But Peter Hayes, from Gloucester, said the reality was "really disappointing"."We've paid £266 for the Golden Circle and were promised lots of different things," he said."We've come through pretty much the same entrance as everyone else, and the Golden Circle is currently inaccessible. "There's so many people crammed in, there's no way I want to go into that."I've actually found myself in the ordinary ticket area, just happy to be in a bit of space."Mr Hayes said he had to queue for more than 90 minutes to be served at the bars, one of which had run out of everything except soft drinks by 19:45 BST. Daisy, from Leicester, told the BBC on Friday: "It's absolutely packed, there's no staff anywhere and there's no directions for anything. "It was chaos, so I did not get searched or anything, which didn't really reassure me."Rina Pengilly said she had bought the premium tickets four months prior as a surprise for her father. "It was meant to be a very special occasion and we can't even get in," she said. "My dad needs special assistance so I wanted to be in the Golden Circle for his own safety, so that's why it's disappointing." A spokesperson for Senbla denied claims that the tickets for the Golden Circle section were oversold. "Last night Robbie Williams wowed the audience with a spectacular show, the first night of two he is performing in Bath," they said."There was a very small issue with Golden Circle ticket holders yesterday evening, where later into the concert there were pinch points causing delays to the entry of the Golden Circle section. This section was not oversold."We have ensured that this has been rectified for this evening's concert by putting into place stronger communications lines between our security teams and event staff."
Scottish Sun
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Much-loved US rockband announce major Scots show
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) AMERICAN rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are coming to Scotland for an exciting anniversary tour. The ensemble, from San Francisco, California, will play Glasgow's O2 Academy in December to celebrate two decades since the release of their third studio album Howl. Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 3 Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club performs in Austin, Texas Credit: Getty - Contributor 3 Black Rebel Motorcycle Club perform a concert in central London Credit: PA:Press Association The record contains a string of hits including Shuffle Your Feet, Ain't No Easy Way and Weight of the World. The group originally consisted of Peter Hayes, Robert Levon Been, and Nick Jago. However Nick left the band in 2008 and was replaced by Leah Shapiro. The upcoming gig was only revealed tonight and the social media post has already racked up dozens of likes. Tickets go on sale on Friday. Elsewhere, furious concertgoers who were left queuing for hours before a gig at Glasgow's Hydro last night have blasted venue bosses - claiming they 'couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery'. Thousands of dance music fans flocked to the OVO arena on Sunday evening for the Bank Holiday Clubland Live show which was billed as 'The Biggest Night of Your Life'. The star-studded lineup featured huge names like DJ Basshunter and noughties dance icon Cascada. And the "three-hour action-packed show" promised ticketholders a chance to "relive the classic tunes in a party atmosphere". But hundreds of revellers were left sorely disappointed after having to queue up for two hours and missing some of the gig. Doors opened at 6.30pm, with the event scheduled to start at 7 pm and end at 10.30pm. But scores of raging fans claimed they did not enter the venue until several hours after it began. Dozens of peeved-off concertgoers took to social media to share their frustration at the 'terrible' management of the event. One angry attendee wrote: "Well went to clubland at the Hydro in Glasgow. Organised f****** chaos, couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery. 3 A much-loved US rock band is performing at Glasgow's 02 Academy Credit: Google Earth "Doors opened at 6.30pm, concerts starts at 7pm, and we are still outside at 7.55pm. F*** that. Home time. We were told we'd be another hour to get in."
Irish Examiner
05-05-2025
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Cork man urges HSE to provide breakthrough prostate cancer therapy to public patients
A man with incurable prostate cancer whose only chance is a 'breakthrough therapy' not available for public patients has called on the HSE to help men in his situation. Peter Hayes, 62, lives in Shanagarry, Co Cork. Despite the best efforts of doctors in Cork and Dublin since 2023, the cancer has spread. At his last scan, he said: 'My jaw nearly hit the floor. The cancer is in the legs, it's in the arms, it's in the liver, it's in the lung, it's in the spine, it's just everywhere. I was shocked, I was just absolutely and utterly shocked.' He has received multiple different treatments. The only remaining option is a new radioligand therapy called Pluvicto. 'This is it, after this there's nothing,' he said. 'It's not nice to even think about it. I've been pretty resilient about it but there are days now there's frustration.' In desperation Mr Hayes has shared his story widely. 'I am very very lucky because I have a benefactor who came forward, otherwise I wouldn't be getting this treatment yet,' he said. 'My benefactor came forward out of the blue. I'm not mentioning names but it's not the pharmaceutical company.' He had the first session last week: It's €27,300 per session and I need at least six. The treatment left him exhausted but he said on Monday: 'It's a necessity of my life that I have to go through this, if I don't I don't have a life." He added: 'I would ask everybody, what about the men who can't afford this?' The treatment is available in eight EU countries. 'The message I really want to get out is we're Irish citizens, why can't we access a medication that most people in Europe now can access?' His wife and two adult sons are going through this with him, he said, adding: 'I was told up to a 100 men each year are going to need this.' Mr Hayes has a petition on Uplift calling for the HSE to act. His plea comes after almost 40 cancer doctors and researchers wrote to the HSE urging price negotiations with Novartis to continue. Peter Hayes: 'The message I really want to get out is we're Irish citizens, why can't we access a medication that most people in Europe now can access?' Photo: Peter Hayes 'Clinicians worldwide involved in caring for these patients regard it as a significant breakthrough therapy for patients with advanced disease,' they said in a letter highlighted in the Irish Examiner. The treatment is approved by the European Medicines Agency. It is being assessed here so the HSE cannot comment. They said: 'The HSE is committed to providing access to as many medicines as possible, in as timely a fashion as possible, from the resources available - provided - to it. 'The HSE robustly assesses applications for pricing and reimbursement to make sure that it can stretch available resources as far as possible and to deliver the best value in relation to each medicine and ultimately more medicines to Irish citizens and patients.' Read More New prostate cancer test means some men could avoid unnecessary treatment
