David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Okay. I want to move to the minor ailment scheme and to give the IPU most of the remaining time to outline how that would work. I see this as a no-brainer. It is something that I think could happen at pace and speed if the political will was there to make it happen. It should not have to be something that we have to wait for a national strategy to be in place. Obviously a national strategy can take time and there are lots of elements of what could be in a national strategy but look at what happened in winter, and ever during summer, in the pressure on our health service. GPs are under fierce pressure and anything we can do to take pressure away from primary care and general practice would be important. In the three minutes left, how can the minor ailment scheme work in practice? What benefits would it have for patients? How will it take pressure away from GPs at a time when we need more GPs and we need more general practice infrastructure? Anything we can do to relieve pressure would be good. Why might there be resistance to this? If it is a no-brainer, why has it not been done before now? Has the IPU been given any logic or reason for that?

I have put parliamentary questions down on this issue. An issue which the Department has flagged up to myself and to other Deputies who have raised this is that it sees a potential conflict between those who supply medicines and those who prescribe. What is the IPU's response to that?