Mr. Darragh O'Loughlin:

To avoid a scenario where a pharmacist would have to refuse to dispense a person's medicines or explain to someone who assumed he would not be paying for his medicines that they are expensive and that he would have to pay for them because his card has come up as invalid we have negotiated a protocol with the primary care reimbursement service. Under the protocol, once a patient has a properly-completed general medical services prescription form from his general practitioner there should be no problem. The GP is the gatekeeper, as it were, to a patient's eligibility. If the GP issues the prescription, then we can dispense the medicines in good faith. The primary care reimbursement service will flag to us afterwards that there is a question mark over a given patient's eligibility or the validity of his medical card. We will then go back to the patient and explain that he needs to contact the HSE because there is an issue with the eligibility or validity but we can dispense the medicines on the day. What we have achieved through this protocol with the PCRS is a scenario whereby no patient should be turned away from a pharmacy without his medicines simply because his medical card has been withdrawn. The idea is that patients have time to make whatever arrangements are necessary. Once we have the properly completed form we can dispense in good faith.