I welcome to the Gallery five parents from various parts of Ireland and Britain. They are Vera Twomey, Callie Blackwell, Tannine Montgomery, Danielle Davis and Karen Grey.

Currently these parents are treating their children with medical cannabis.

I missed Deputy Micheál Martin's contribution.

The policy on medical cannabis from this Government is absolutely shambolic. One year ago to the day, a majority of the House voted to let the Bill for medical cannabis proceed to the next stage. The Government has basically put in place an embargo.

Time is of the essence. Currently people have to leave the country to get access to medicinal cannabis via licence. It gets worse. Parents of children have to access medical cannabis illegally to treat the conditions. As long as there is ambiguity and a lack of legislative change we will have this chaotic situation.

It has been two years since the Health Products Regulatory Authority report. It has been one year since our legislation. What is it going to be? Will it be our legislation or the HPRA report?

As the Deputy will be aware the Oireachtas committee considered the Bill and came to the conclusion that it did not believe it was appropriate for that Bill to proceed.

The House overturned that decision.

The House subsequently overturned that decision - I am aware of that - but the Bill has not progressed since.

The Government has taken a twin-track approach to this, as the Deputy will be aware. Products with tetrahydrocannabinol are subject to licence where the applicant has a medical consultant who is leading the request. To the best of my knowledge none of those applications has been refused. Then there is the case of non-THC medicinal products. The Department has engaged extensively and is looking at international best practice to see how we can progress that issue.

Why has it taken two years?