Call for HSE to allow access to Alzheimer's drug

Updated / Friday, 23 Oct 2026 12:16

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A Consultant Neurologist at Tallaght University Hospital has called on the HSE to allow for access to a drug that can help slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease in patients.

It comes as 16 leading clinicians working in dementia medicine across the country have written to the Minister for Health appealing for access to the new drug, Lecanemab.

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with David McCullagh, Dr Antoinette O'Connor said: "This drug is one of a new type of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately for the last 20 years we’ve had very little we can offer from a therapies point of view to people living with Alzheimer's."

Dr O’Connor said there are treatments that manage symptoms, "whereas these agents present a step-change because they alter the underlying disease trajectory".

She said a hallmark protein called amyloid builds up in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s and subsequently damages brain cells.

"And these drugs remove the amyloid and have been shown to slow the disease progression, which is really an exciting advent having had many years of failed disease modifying treatment trials," she said.

However, Dr O’Connor said it does not stop the disease or reverse it.

"Looking at the trials of these agents depending on the different measures you use, it is around a 20% to 40% slowing.

"But what is really important with these agents is that it does show a change in the disease trajectory, so it alters the underlying disease biology," she said.

She described it as very consistent in its outcome measures - quality of life measures, different memory and thinking measures and measures of independence.

Dr O'Connor said it is modest but "important to think of these treatments not just in the terms of numbers but actually what it means at an individual level".

"And any delay of progression is meaningful for many people," she added.

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Dr O’Connor said it is not known how many people in Ireland are living with dementia but it is estimated that there are 64,000 and two to three times as many living with it at a milder stage, with mild cognitive impairment.

She said the majority of people living with cognitive impairment is due to Alzheimer’s disease.

"However, the majority of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia will not be eligible for these treatments," she said.

The cost of the treatment drug Lecanemab is around €21,000 per annum.

"It is important to understand that there are a lot of unquantified costs with dementia.

"Often the traditional health technology assessments don’t recognise this because this is a condition that not only affects the individuals, but also families.

"There is an unquantified burden on the carer," she said, adding that it is also on the family.

She said the treatment "marks a new epoch in Alzheimer’s disease care".

"We need to be able to move forward so that patients in Ireland have the same equity of access that they would in other parts of the world," she said.

Dr O’Connor said we need to think differently about arriving at solutions to manage access programmes where carefully selected patients receive treatments.

In a statement to the programme, the HSE said it is committed to providing access to as many medicines as possible in as timely a fashion as possible from the resources available and that it would robustly assess applications for pricing and reimbursement.

"Final decisions are taken by the HSE senior leadership team, and the application remains under consideration," it said.