The success of Viagra has been blamed by the pharmaceutical company Vivus Inc, for its reversal of a decision to establish a new plant in Ireland.
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, announced last December that the company would be locating in the Navan Business Park with the creation of 250 jobs.
However, the company informed the IDA on Monday that it will not be going ahead with its plans to produce MUSE in Ireland. The product is used in the treatment of severe erectile dysfunction and delivers the drug alprostadil into the urethra using a plastic applicator inserted into it.
The company's literature says that the alprostadil is absorbed through the lining of the urethra into the erectile tissues producing an erection within minutes.
Vivus has lost patients to Viagra and it is expected that further tablet-based treatments will take business from alternative treatments. Vivus has plants in the US and UK but has had to restructure itself - with consequential redundancies - as a result of Viagra's success.
"It [Viagra] has dramatically increased the market but it has all gone to other competitors and it has picked up patients trialing MUSE. We are cancelling at the present time our plans to build another factory in Ireland, we have more than [enough] capacity in our 90,000 square foot facility in the US," said Vivus director Mr Terry Nida.
The IDA said that when the news was announced last December that Vivus would locate in Navan and create 250 jobs over three years, it was not anticipated that Viagra would achieve such success.
"It is the right decision for Vivus. The market has changed so much in six months that there is no point in them undertaking a major investment," a spokesman said.
When MUSE was launched in the US in January 1997 it had US sales of more than $100 million in the first nine months of 1997. The company has not received any grant assistance from the IDA for the 30-acre site they leased in the 100-acre business park. A total investment of £28 million would have been involved if the project had gone ahead.
The IDA is currently in negotiations with a number of other companies considering locating new plants in the Navan Business Park and it hopes to finalise a deal for an alternative industry in the coming weeks.
