MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney said yesterday she loved her job and would be eager to continue in her role for the duration of this Dáil even if there were a Cabinet reshuffle.
"I love the job, I love the challenge, I'm totally focused on continuing to reform the health service," she told the Today With Pat Kennyprogramme on RTÉ Radio 1.
She added that she had not made a decision yet on what to do in 2012 when the life of the current Government comes to an end.
“I have not said that . . . I have never said that,” she responded, when asked if this was her last spell in the Dáil. “I’m a lot younger than some people when they’re first elected to the Dáil. I’m 55 years of age, so I think I’ve a couple of more years to go.”
In October 2007, when asked about this, she also said she had not made up her mind whether to run in the next election. She said back then: “The next election is five years away, and I’m certainly not going to make any decisions now that I might regret.”
Meanwhile, she confirmed that her plan to introduce a system of reference pricing to further bring down the cost of medicines would go ahead in 2011.
Legislation paving the way for the system was approved by the Government on Tuesday.
Under the new system the State will set the price it’s prepared to pay for drugs reimbursed under the medical card and other State schemes, and patients who want more expensive branded drugs will have to pay the balance themselves. Ms Harney said a similar system had delivered substantial savings in Finland.
Asked if Irish people were being ripped off before the manufacturers of nearly 300 off-patent branded drugs reduced their prices by 40 per cent this week, she said: “Well, there’s no doubt we weren’t getting value.”
Ms Harney added that Ireland was so small it does not have the “pricing clout of bigger countries”.
She would love to see the EU as a whole negotiating with the pharmaceutical sector, which would deliver greater savings. “But that’s a situation that is a long way off . . . First of all the companies wouldn’t allow it, I don’t think.”