Chairman: I welcome the witnesses from the HSE, the Department of Health and the Health Products Regulatory Authority to our meeting. They will provide us with an update on the medical cannabis access programme. I welcome from the HSE, Mr. Shaun Flanagan, assistant national director, HSE primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, and Professor Bryan Lynch, consultant paediatric neurologist, Children's University Hospital, Temple Street; from the Department of Health, Mr. Muiris O'Connor, assistant secretary, research and development and health analytics division, Ms Anne Marie Seymour, principal officer, medicines, controlled drugs and pharmacy legislation unit, and Mr. Conor Brennan, assistant principal officer, medicines, controlled drugs and pharmacy legislation unit; and from the Health Products Regulatory Authority, Dr. Lorraine Nolan, chief executive, Ms Grainne Power, director of human products authorisation and registration, and Ms Aoife Farrell, health products distribution manager.

Mr Muiris O’Connor: I thank the Chair and members for the opportunity to address them on the medical cannabis access programme. To put cannabis in context, it is a Schedule 1 controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act. It is, therefore, subject to strict levels of control and access is allowed under licence for limited purposes only.

As the name would indicate, the purpose of the medical cannabis access programme, MCAP, is to enable access to a controlled substance which otherwise would not be legally available to patients. In this case the controlled substance is tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC, a psychoactive derivative of cannabis. Cannabidiol, known as CBD, another extract of cannabis, is not of itself a controlled substance and the MCAP is not intended as a means of accessing CBD-based products. The ministerial licence programme, in operation since 2017, is similar in that it enables, with the support of a consultant, a GP to prescribe cannabis-based products where the patient is regularly monitored by a consultant.

The committee will be aware that in recent years, in both Ireland and abroad, the subject of using cannabis products for medical reasons has become an issue of social and political debate, with calls for cannabis products to be made available to Irish patients. Owing to this increasing interest, in December 2016, the Minister for Health requested the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, to provide scientific advice on the use of cannabis for medical purposes. Our colleagues in the HPRA will be able to elucidate further their findings in this review. Following publication of this HPRA report, the Minister for Health established an expert reference group to provide clinical guidelines for the development of a medical cannabis access programme.

[For the full Debate click on this link to the Oireachtas website]