Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Higgins for putting the Competition (Amendment) Bill 2007 on the Order Paper for discussion in Private Members' time today. This is not the first occasion on which he has raised the issue. He has been pushing this stone up the hill for many years and highlighting the issue in public at every opportunity.

Pharmacists are the latest group to have run foul of the Competition Act 2002. They are seeking an equitable and independent process for the determination of fees, services and contracts. They have a representative association, the Irish Pharmaceutical Union, IPU, which they want to represent them in negotiations with the HSE, the Department of Health and Children and the wholesale sector in relation to the cost of medicines. They are totally opposed to the present situation where the HSE seeks to unilaterally impose a price regime for medicines dispensed under the community drug schemes, namely, the medical card, drugs payment and methadone treatment schemes.

The cost cutting proposals from the HSE seek to make pharmacists responsible for the increasing cost of medicines to the State and penalise them accordingly. However, it is the Government that agrees the price of medicines with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. In fact, the rising cost of medicines is due to a range of factors such as the impact of the Government's decision to introduce the drugs payment scheme, the extension of medical cards to all persons over 70 years of age, the rising population and the very high cost of many new medicines, which for certain patients reduce the need for hospitalisation.

In my constituency, Dublin Central, the majority of patients attending pharmacies are participants in the community drugs scheme. They participate mainly in the medical card and drugs payment schemes, while others participate in the methadone treatment scheme. The latter incur high management costs and the scheme is often fraught with major security issues as regards pharmacy staff. Pharmacists have been the unsung heroes of the scheme. They have provided a community service when other professionals were and still are very reluctant to get their hands dirty. It is unconscionable that they should be expected to provide this service at a loss, which would be the effect of the new reimbursement proposals from the HSE if implemented, as threatened, from 1 December.

The Competition Act 2002, as Deputy Higgins explained, is a large part of the problem. It is high time the Act, section 4 in particular, was amended so as to avoid discrimination against various categories engaged in the production, supply or distribution of goods or the provision of services. Such persons are deemed to be self-employed and subject to the Act's anti-competition provisions. That is the nub of the problem. It is something of an anomaly that while they are entitled to seek trade union membership or can belong to a professional body, they are not entitled to have a trade union or professional association negotiate collectively or engage in full representative activity on their behalf. That is a narrow and outdated concept and a new formula is required.

As Deputy Higgins mentioned, Equity, the actors' and artists' section of SIPTU, has run foul of the Competition Act in its efforts to secure a minimum rate of pay for its members' services and performances. Strange as it may seem, the Competition Authority has deemed Equity's negotiations to be an attempt at price fixing and, therefore, anti-competitive. That is a ludicrous use of the Act. Similarly, the Irish Pharmaceutical Union has run foul of section 4 of the Act. The Pharmaceutical Distributors Federation, PDF, the wholesalers' representative body, refused to negotiate a price for its products on the grounds that these were contractual matters between individual retailers. The HSE then compounded the problem by avoiding the existing arrangements and deciding that its own consultation process, accompanied by an independent economic analysis, was the most appropriate means for the determination of new reimbursement arrangements for pharmaceutical suppliers. When the new cost saving reimbursement arrangements were announced on 17 September, effective from 1 December, there was naturally a cry of outrage from pharmacists the length and breadth of the country at this unilateral decision by the HSE. It threatened to make pharmacies unviable. Many small pharmacies were threatened and, therefore, the livelihoods of the pharmacists concerned. The new fee structure would mean pharmacists having to dispense medicines to 1.5 million medical card holders at a loss.

The Competition (Amendment) Bill 2007 would enable the Government to make a declaration that there is a public interest involved rather than an anti-competitive obstacle in negotiating a collective agreement between a public body and an organisation representative of the profession concerned. This would allow us to get away from the effects of section 4 of the Competition Act which is causing the problem. I urge the Minister to accept the Bill to remove the anomaly in the Competition Act and allow meaningful negotiations to begin to solve the pharmacies' problem.

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