The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has told the Dáil that clearly there is going to be a "patent cliff" in the pharmaceutical sector.
This will see a lot of drugs going off patent, which will affect sales, Minister Richard Bruton admitted.
But the Minister said the Government had identified other areas of potential growth such as the bio-pharmaceutical sector. He said the key to success was 'spread'.
Mr Bruton was responding to questions from Fianna Fáil's Dara Calleary in the Dáil this afternoon.
Mr Calleary had wanted to know if we should we be concerned at the high number of drugs due to come off patent and the effect this would have on our manufacturing economy.
Deputy Calleary noted growth in the manufacturing sector last year, but he said he was concerned as there had been a decline of 4,000 jobs between April and June of this year. He said he was concerned that half of IDA Ireland's manufacturing jobs were in the pharma sector.
Richard Bruton told him that this was a sector the Government was taking very seriously and that since taking Government it had focused on it and achieving growth in it.
Minister Bruton later told the Dáil that achieving the extra 100,000 additional jobs by 2016, as set out under the Action Plan for Jobs, would require a transformational change in our economy.
