Minister for Health Simon Harris has appealed to pharmaceutical companies manufacturing cancer drugs to reopen a programme for the provision of the drugs on compassionate grounds, while the approval process was ongoing.
He said the decisions on approval of new drugs should be clinician-led and asked if it was right for the minister to make such decisions.
He also said he had a teleconference with HSE Director General Tony O'Brien on the issue.
Pharmaceutical company MSD said it operates a compassionate access programme and over 100 patients in Ireland have received pembrolizumab free-of-charge over the last two years.
It said that those patients who are still benefiting from the treatment continue to receive pembrolizumab today.
The National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics which reviews new medicines on behalf of the Government, completed its assessment in February and deemed pembro to be cost effective.
MSD says it is actively engaging with all relevant parties and is committed to ensuring access to new patients as soon as possible.
Earlier, Mr Harris said that he wants to put in place a winter initiative which will deal with emergency department overcrowding, that involves hospitals and primary and community care.
Mr Harris attended his first meeting of the Emergency Department Task Force today but said he would not be setting targets today.
He said the meeting would be "a listening exercise" and he would be asking all participants to consider what a winter initiative could look like this year.
Mr Harris said that the solution to the problem did not lie solely in acute hospitals.
He also said that trolley numbers had reduced by around 20% over the first few weeks of May, compared with last year.
Today, there were 224 patients on trolleys or on wards awaiting admission to a hospital bed.
The hospitals worst affected are the Midland Regional in Mullingar with 28 patients waiting, Tallaght with 24 and South Tipperary General with 20.
The figures are compiled by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.
New Programme for Govt promises to reduce waiting times for hospital beds
Meanwhile, the new Programme for Government promises to reduce the number of people waiting more than six hours for a bed.
The Emergency Department Task Force meeting has been discussing funding for 'Fair Deal' nursing home beds and a pause in funding for home care packages in several HSE areas, both of which assist freeing up hospital beds.
The HSE has said there is no national moratorium on the provision of home care packages.
However a temporary freeze on new home care packages is in place in some areas due to budget overruns.
The service is being scaled back to avoid an estimated overrun of €14.5 million by the end of December.
Under the HSE Service Plan for this year, the executive promised 15,450 home care packages, the same as last year.
Extra funding was provided earlier this year under the Emergency Department Task Force plan to free up hospital beds by providing more home care packages.
The aim was to have as much an impact on delayed discharges during the first three months of the year.
The HSE says that some of its Community Health Organisations have spent more on packages than would have budgeted for at this point.
In certain areas, there is a pause on new packages, to get back on budget.
The HSE national plan for this year warned that it may be necessary to have waiting lists, given the demand for the service.
Earlier, a spokesperson for the Irish Hospital Consultants Association said that the union would be briefing Minister Harris on the urgent need to deal with capacity restraints in acute hospitals and mental health services at today's meeting.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Dr Gerard Crotty said there is a record number of waiting lists and a record number of people waiting on trolleys.
In addition, Dr Crotty said that there was a big problem recruiting consultants and a number of changes need to be implemented urgently to reverse the "medical brain drain".
He said that changes, introduced for newly-appointed consultants in 2011, should be reversed.
Dr Crotty said the IHCA was aware of a number of posts where efforts have been made, in vain, to fill them.
The problem in failing to fill these posts was, he said, costing a large amount of money because locums have to be employed from agencies.
He said most consultants are working well beyond their hours and filling in for absent colleagues.
He said many consultants are facing burnout or seeking early retirement because of the "unreasonable pressures" caused by excessive workloads, poor working conditions and absent colleagues.
