Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for not being here for the first part of the presentation as I had to be somewhere else. I appreciate the witnesses coming here this morning. I would like to be associated with Deputy Maloney's comments. As politicians both here in committee and in the media we are nearly always very critical and it is really nice to see a change management programme which evolved last year having such a successful outcome. I congratulate the witnesses on that. I am somebody who is genuinely interested in the delivery of health services but I am new to it. Considering the change management done by the wider team in the Department of Health and the HSE over the past year, there have been massively improved outputs, and all while we are losing staff and money. It is a credit to everybody here and I thank the witnesses for that.

The question I have is not about the service plan as the issue is not in the plan. Will the witnesses comment on the umbrella of health and well-being programmes? Do they see any benefit to extending the remit of the pharmacy sector, particularly around proactive measures regarding community services in the health and well-being sector? It would be great news if this was already done. I have a concern that since we increased the dispensing rate - I accept our Government has done this - people are self-medicating and going into pharmacists on a weekly and monthly basis but leaving items off their list without fully recognising what they are doing or the impact on their health. Is there a benefit in employing, empowering, asking, engaging or paying the pharmacy sector to be more involved? Are there any plans afoot in that regard?