Rare disease medicine made in Waterford can’t be bought in Ireland - The Munster Express
By Aaron Kent · The Munster Express · 7 July 2026
Rare disease medicine made in Waterford can’t be bought in Ireland General Stories The Munster Express
A TD has questioned why 50% of the global supply of a Sanofi drug is made in Waterford but not for sale in Ireland.
The comments from TD Barry Ward from Dún Laoghaire, came as part of a Dáil debate on Rare Diseases.
“Another example is eosinophilic esophagitis, EoE, which is a chronic, allergic inflammatory disease of the oesophagus from which people suffer and that can be treated by a particular drug produced by Sanofi,” explained TD Barry.
“Some 50% of its global production is in Waterford, yet that drug is not available for treatment of juveniles in this jurisdiction.
TD Barry went on to speculate that the Irish market may not be profitable enough to incentivise the company to make the medicine available.
“My understanding of the reason it is not available is quite simply that Sanofi has not made the application. There might be really good reasons for that and if there are, then let us have them out, but my concern is that because Ireland is a smaller market for these drugs, it disincentivises the company from making what is presumably a costlier application from the point of view putting together material than it might be in another country. “
He concluded by calling for an intervention for a single EU market for medicines of rare diseases.
“For dealing with rare diseases in the longer term, perhaps we should be looking at a single European Union market for these things, which would be a single EU authorisation or application market so that we no longer suffered from being the smaller market within the European Union,” he suggested.
“We could tell drug companies to apply to the European Union and then they would get to run their drugs in Ireland and get to avail of the schemes in Ireland.
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Reporting by Aaron Kent for The Munster Express, funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme. Republished by News Room under the scheme’s reuse permission.
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