300 ≠ 87

The pharmaceutical industry's great giveaway to the people of Ireland is not quite as generous as it has successfully managed to spin.

Although the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA) claims to have cut the cost of 300 drugs by 40 per cent, the lobby group has displayed all the cunning of a sheep farmer on the Cooley peninsula applying for EU headage grants. There's a lot of double- and even triple-counting going on.

The IPHA's list of products included in the initiative contains multiple entries, denoting different dosages. It also contains different versions of the same drug made by different manufacturers.

In reality, there are, according to my tally, only 87 unique drugs on the list. And as they're all off-patent anyway, they should have been available at rock-bottom prices before now in any case.

The real test of the industry's 'generosity' will be the level of discount it will apply to some of its biggest moneyspinners, which are coming off patent in the next couple of years.