I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. I stand here frustrated that we are having this conversation at all. We should be spending time talking about improvements to the health service but instead we are talking about a service that is effectively going backwards. The reality is that when we were talking about the community pharmacy agreement in October in this House, I raised issues about phased dispensing and blister packing. There was no action from the Minister or her Department. It is only when uproar has arisen in the past week that she has responded to say that she has to try to work things out. We all know that blister packing is separate from phased dispensing, but the reality is that many pharmacists were using the money they were receiving for phased dispensing to put together blister packs for their patients. Blister packing is the dinosaur of medical technology, but it works in terms of ensuring that vulnerable patients and patients with a disability get the appropriate medication. It prevents unnecessary hospitalisation, it gives peace of mind to families and it is utterly consistent with the perspective that we should try to keep people at home. As I said in this Chamber two months ago, it is a real backwards step in the new community pharmacy agreement that the Government would reduce from four to two the number of criteria to be eligible for phased dispensing. As many pharmacists will not be getting that money for phased dispensing, the free blister pack service that many patients were availing of is coming to an end and they will have to pay for it. The consequences are potentially very real for many patients. I am struck by research that was done after the introduction of prescription charges in 2011. Obviously, they were not popular at the time but were done for a particular reason. Professor Charles Normand in Trinity College Dublin undertook significant research to show that there was a significantly higher number of strokes and heart attacks among the population who should have been taking their medication. Due to the introduction of prescription charges, these people failed to take their proper prescriptions. I worry that people who should be getting blister packing will not pay €10, €20, €30, €40 or indeed €50 - whatever the amount the pharmacist is going to individually charge - to get the blister packing service and then we will end up in a situation where health outcomes deteriorate and not improve. The reality here is that older people and those with a disability have become pawns in a game being played out between the Department of Health and pharmacists. Phased dispensing has become a pawn in the game being played between the Minister and the IPU. That is really to be regretted. It is the antithesis of all the messaging that has been coming from the Minister and the Department over the past year as to how to improve our hospital system, prevent unnecessary hospitalisations and ultimately ensure more people are looked after at home. I will speak to where we are now. There are lines within the community pharmacy agreement that talk about a saving arising from the withdrawal of the two categories of phased dispensing. I have a question for the Minister. What has she done since the agreement was made in September to determine how that saving is to be used? Has the Department of Health done anything with pharmacists in that time? I am not hearing about anything having been done. What I am hearing is that it was wrong and not transparent of pharmacists to use phased dispensing money to provide a blister packing service. That is completely the wrong message. Many pharmacists have been doing this for the right reasons and have not been making money from the phased dispensing service. They have been doing it because they can see the impact on their patients. What is the Minister going to do in the time she has given herself to ensure appropriate measures are put in place so that any patient who needs and wants blister packing or phased dispensing, which are separate but related, can access those services? We need to do more of it in future and not less. It is really regrettable that we have to spend any time debating the matter this evening when it should never have been included in the community pharmacy agreement. We also raised it on the floor of the Chamber when we were discussing the agreement back in October.

Sentiment score: 0.05