Irish-registered medical practitioners may apply to the Minister for Health for a licence to access cannabis for medical use for a named patient under their care. Applications for this Ministerial licence can only be accepted from:
• An individual patient’s medical consultant, where evidence of an established doctor-patient relationship exists, or
• From the individual patient’s GP where the application is also accompanied by a written endorsement for the cannabis treatment from the patient’s medical consultant.
The Medical Cannabis Access Programme (MCAP) allows medical consultants to prescribe specified cannabis-based products for patients with certain medical conditions who have exhausted all other available medical treatment options. Those medical conditions are:
• Spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis
• Intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy
• Severe, refractory (treatment-resistant) epilepsy
Patients treated under Ministerial licence may have one of these conditions or they may have a different condition. The HSE will only reimburse eligible patients who access a cannabis product under the Ministerial licensing route if prescribed for one of the three medical conditions included in the MCAP.