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NEARLY TWO YEARS since Health Minister Simon Harris announced that a medicinal cannabis access programme is to be established, but as of yet no scheme has been rolled out.
The delay is being blamed on the government running into problems finding a quality assured supplier of cannabis and a supplier that can export its products to Ireland, which is proving difficult.
The access programme aims to allow access to cannabis-based therapies for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis, those experiencing nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, and those with severe, refractory and treatment-resistant epilepsy.
The establishment of the scheme follows on from recommendations from the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA).
As the months drag on, questions are now being asked about what the hold up is.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said the Dáil has been “extremely patient” about the delays as have people around the country.
He added that when the programme will be rolled out remains a “mystery” stating that the numbers using the existing framework for importing medicinal cannabis, based on an endorsement by one’s general practitioner, GP, and consultant, is growing all the time.
Patients, such as Vera Twomey, must travel overseas to Europe every three months to secure the medicinal cannabis which has been identified by their specialists and GPs, said Martin, who added: “This cannot go on.”
People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny has also raised the issue countless times. Next week, he will push for his Cannabis for Medicinal Use Regulation Bill, which he states is “currently under an effective embargo” by the government as they have imposed a money message on it, despite the Dáil voting to pass the Bill last year.
He said the unnecessary hold up is preventing children and others who could benefit from access to medicinal cannabis from obtaining it.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the problem relates to finding a supplier or pharmacy in Ireland which would be “willing and capable of providing the product and ensuring it was up to standard in pharmaceutical regulations, safety and so on”.
The Department of Health told TheJournal.ie that “considerable progress” is being made in relation to the introduction of the cannabis for medical use access programme.
However, Health Minister Simon Harris has acknowledged that the “lack of availability of cannabis products in Ireland remains the most critical barrier to full implementation” of the scheme.
“Full establishment is dependent on the commercial operators making these products available in Ireland,” he said, adding that while medical cannabis products are not medicines, ensuring that such products meet appropriate quality standards when they are made available to the Irish market is a critical aspect of facilitating safe access to medical cannabis for Irish-based patients.
Harris said it Department of Health officials are currently working intensively on the issue to ensure a supply of appropriate medical cannabis products from other EU Member States and further afield to meet the needs of Irish patients.
In a statement the department the cannabis products to be available under the scheme are not subject to the same rigorous safety, quality and efficacy standards that are in place for medicines, nor are the producers subject to the same responsibilities as the marketing authorisation holders for authorised medicines.
It added that while efficacy and safety data are not available for these products, “it is crucially important to be assured, as far as possible, of the quality of the products, as advised by the HPRA”.
Availability, quality standard and affordability to patients is “critical” in establishing the access programme.
However, the health department states that only two countries, Canada and the Netherlands, currently permit export of such cannabis products, which meet acceptable quality control standards, beyond their borders.
The department said it is not aware that quality-approved medical cannabis products are available on the UK market.
The Netherlands permits exports of cannabis dried herb, but does not permit commercial export of their oil-based cannabis formulations. Therefore, medical cannabis oils can only be procured from the Netherlands by patients who present a valid medical prescription to an authorised Dutch-based pharmacy.
Until this is all figured out, doctors are operating under the current ministerial licencing route, which allows them to prescribe medical cannabis for their patients.
Licences have now been granted for twelve individual patients, the majority of whom are obtaining their medical cannabis from a Dutch pharmacy on foot of their medical prescription.
The health minister said he or his department have no control in relation to business decisions taken by commercial product manufacturers abroad and has no powers to compel such companies to supply their products to Irish market.
Until the access scheme is up and running, patients are forced to source the prescribed medical cannabis-based product from a pharmacy in the Netherlands.
The department said it issues guidance to patients about the sourcing of cannabis products abroad, stating that it understands that patients who have been prescribed such products under ministerial licence are sourcing the products from Transvaal Pharmacy in The Hague.
Department officials stated they are working intensively on finding solutions to the supply of appropriate products for Irish patients.
They should be made build their own power plants contributing to the grid.
Not taking away.
@Notty Tee: That is what’s needed, a guarantee that new data centres are self-sufficient, and can contribute to the grid when needed. We could even use their vast battery backups for national energy storage, which is important as renewables (wind, solar) are intermittent. They should be paying back more than just taxes.
Also, while new planning permission requirements for data centres requires the owner to commit to generating, or storing, the same amount of power as the data centre uses, these changes does mean they generate their own electricity all the time, it’s only back up power. So if a power station goes down, or there’s a lack of power due to a lack of wind, or a cable snaps in the Irish Sea, and we lack power, we won’t have to switch off sections of the grid (rolling black-outs) to keep data centres on. So there’s at least that.
@Notty Tee: you’re using a data centre right now looking at this!
@David Jordan: why dont we close all the data centres and bring the country back to the 1950s
@Peter Byrne: well that’s just wrong. Maybe learn how these things work.
Disgusting. For those saying we need data centres to keep up with technological advances – these data centres are housing data from across the world. Helping other countries advance technology while having us pay extra for electricity to accommodate them. We’re a joke.
@James Groden: far left nonsense opposing progress as per usual. You and the far right are two sides of the same coin
@James Groden: we don’t pay for their electricity…
@Eoghan O Sullivan: No you don’t, but you massively subsidise it. They have a good reason for not showing us the rates big business pays.
People forget very easily. What about the scandal in 2023, which showed how consumers were paying more to help businesses for the previous 10 years.
What is the actual financial benefit to Ireland from accommodating data centers?
@P0h2YVAL: they pay for their electricity. Many jobs in construction, and some thereafter.
@Eoghan O Sullivan: this is untrue. They do not pay their fair share, and sometimes not at all. There are construction jobs for mostly non-nationals and a handful of ex-pats. It’s the new colonisation. As evidence has shown data centres have NOTHING to do with employment in tech companies themselves. This is an untruth from FFG.
@P0h2YVAL: it’s a negative. We are failing in the scam that is the climate bill due to data centres and will have to pay billions for housing data for everyone else.
Also, I’d imagine a massive target on our backs easily destroyed in war situations.
@Luas Vuitton – Penneys Drag Queen:
Why dont we just close all the data centres so , do away with all those on line nonsense , do away with smart phones, and bring the country back to the 1950s. Most of the data centres capacity is used in Ireland for you silly fotos , all the email and Irish web sites and loads more information which needs storage space
@Eoghan O Sullivan: data centres employ far fewer employees than other tech industries and there’s a dearth of construction workers in the country so the effects on employment is minimal
@Peter Byrne: you need to cop on and grow up.
@Peter Byrne: Why don’t we all go back to living on potatoes and buttermilk you big child.
@P0h2YVAL: zero
The Irish love to burden themselves for foreigners. Data centres should be no different
Add an automated A.I./robot system to the centers, and there will be close to no employment offered by data centers. Give it a decade.
No wonder our electric is the highest in Europe with competition like that. But we’re told it’s Putins war that is pushing up the price. Arseholes
@Ethan Gannon: Have you got special privileges slipping arsehole in there?
@Pat Barry: apparently not. You were able to use the term yourself.
I suppose this will lead to massive fines under the climate agreements?
@A D: yes yes
If they’re saying a third then it will be more. They love to slow boil us with info
@Gavin Smartr: I was thinking the same thing about Paschal’s 50,000 – 80,000 estimate of unemployed possibly to come.
I hate way they make things and then blame us for it. Data centres are hugely damaging for our health and the environment.
@Be Lucky: post Offices always have Doro phones in stock.
@Be Lucky:
Also the health of the children who assembled your mobile phone in China
Is there a case to be made that as electricity is a product in demand, like that of houses, that demand could make the product more expensive?
@Keth 417: not just a case to be made, it’s just an eternal truth, demand will always make any product more expensive. There are only three exceptions to this: goods of conspicuous consumption, inferior goods, and giffen goods.
@George Bowling: Well said.
I’m starting online petition to curb data centres. Please sign it and share it as much as you can.
I’ll be holding a zoom call to kick off the campaign and organise on WhatsApp after that.
Donations via Revolut please.
who do we blame now that eamon ryan is gone? i thought the era of too many data centres, asylum seekers and carbon taxes would be over with no greens in gov?
Because we were an agricultural exporter we had too many cows. Now we are an IT country and they are still unhappy. What next ????
This is what generates thousands of well paid jobs in Ireland, if you watch TV, netflix, use the internet, have a phone, have an online account of any type, then you are using data centres, they are essential to the live as we know it, the only way to demand for these data centres to go some place else is if you live in the woods, use no internet whatsoever and don;t use any type of fuel to heat your house, just hunt roadkill animals, have your own greenhouse and cover yourself warm during winter. Otherwise, you have no idea of what you’re talking about, these data centres will be used one way or another.
This is the fun bit as to why Ireland is a big player in the data centre and IT business
Ireland’s climate is not too hot nor too cold, servers generate heat, in warmer places, it will require massive air conditioning and in places like Norway, massive heating as the servers do not generate enough heat to keep at a regulated temperature in cold weather. Moving servers somewhere else will use more planet resources.
Ireland’s location between the USA and India. A human must always be supervised, and work needs to be active 24/7
In a nutshell, Ireland may not have oil, natural resources, but it has the perfect location for It services. Businesses don’t come here for the craic, they come because it’s cheaper to operate and, for once, it’s better for the environment. We just need to generate more green energy, more wind turbines, more solar panels, stop with the NIMBYSM and get it done
@J Ven: untrue.
@J Ven: True.
@Luas Vuitton – Penneys Drag Queen: Tell me with facts, hard proof, what is untrue? Your feelings don’t make it untrue, please show your facts
@Tasty k: no data centres, no smart phones, go back to the woods
@J Ven: the average data centre employs 30 staff -
a very small number in return for their drain on resources
@J Ven: you’ve made broad sweeping claims with zero evidence yet are demanding proof from others? What a hypocrite
@J Ven: You forgot to mention hospitals who use their own data centres on site plus an external one for mirrored backup.
Data centres are here to stay, and people need to accept them. The alternative is going back to paper records, which are a nightmare in themselves.
If only there was a way for people to calculate the power required and plan in advance for our power requirements. Seemingly impossible in Ireland though and much better to blame the data centre for using the power they said they were going to use.
Surely it’s part of the planning process to see if we have the capacity to accommodate them and if not then deny the permission to build or plan for expanding our power production.
If they were made to add renewable power grids to support their usage and also donate forestry or purchase carbon capturing in addition as then we would avoid all this. Ireland is geographically safer than most countries when it comes to climate events for the future that is why the data centers are being built here.
That’s a lot of porn
This scaremongering has been going on for the past 25 years!
Cows, Tourists, Data – everything is bad for the environment is seems. We are all doomed
In fairness, some people spend a third of their time on their phone…..and then go back to the computer screen in work….which is also using data centers….. He says….typing in the journal…. Via a data centre
For a fraction of the cost compared to the great unwashed
Ban all social media…simples!
Making customers poorer and poorer! We Can’t carry the burden of these Companies any longer…Enough IS Enough! Price Caps Now please!!!
@ louis vitton
I work on one of these construction sites. I’d say it’s made up of 75% Irish lads. Without the non Irish workers, the country would grind to a halt.
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