RTE viewers were left “stunned” after watching Claire Byrne Live on Monday night as a professor on the show revealed that a recent Government purchase of Covid drugs was three times the annual budget.
Prof Michael Barry joined the RTE host for an interview on the purchase of new Covid antiviral pills that was recently signed off by the Government for €90 million.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly recently sought approval from Cabinet to purchase €90 million worth of antiviral pills, which are made by drug companies Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and MSD.
However, Prof Barry revealed that the huge sum is three times the budget the Government normally spends on drugs in a year.
He said: “You’re paying a lot of money, €90 million, when you consider that the total budget across the country for all new drugs is €30 million. It’s three times that.”
“Our issue is, are we getting value for that? Because we didn’t assess it, then it’s very difficult to say.
“The cost per course is about €650 to €700 for a five day treatment course - that’s a lot of money.”
He also said that despite the Government going ahead with the purchase, there were still questions about the safety of the use of these antiviral drugs and their interaction with other drugs.
“In practical terms, this is going to cause a big problem for clinicians in prescribing them,” he said.
“And the reason is, the propensity of them to interact with a whole range of other drugs is enormous.”
However, Prof Kingston Mills who also appeared on the programme said that he believed the €90 million spent on new antiviral drugs was a “small price to pay” if the medication prevented people ending up in ICU.
“If you look at the cost benefit of stopping someone being in hospital for one or two weeks, and going to ICU completely offsets the cost of buying the drug,” he said.
But not all viewers were convinced at the revelation of the high cost of the new drugs, with one social media user saying he was left “stunned”.
They wrote: “Eem anyone else stunned by Prof #MichaelBarry on #cblive .We appear to be buying a pig in a poke.”
Another man pointed out that the money could have been better spent elsewhere, writing: “Imagine how many extra nurses you could employ with €90,000,000.”
But one person disagreed with Prof Barry questioning the price, saying: “So this chap is really arguing that we shouldn't save a life because its too expensive?”
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