Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I have listened with great interest to the opposition to this Bill, which in this case comes from the Government. I have only heard about the Bill's weaknesses and how it would encourage price fixing. As other speakers have noted, price fixing exists at present and it was done at the Government's behest. This is how the Government does business. It determines the rate of increase for people who work in other areas and negotiates with the IPU, as it always has done, to determine the compensation pharmacies will receive in lieu of the service they provide to communities and patients. One must ask a fundamental question. As matters stand, Members are considering legislation that could resolve this impasse and the Government is saying "No" by refusing to accept this legislation.

If the Government is determined not to negotiate with the IPU, how does it imagine that people will have their prescriptions filled? Does it expect people to revert to the old dispensary system? Does it expect the old and the sick to queue up in cold, damp hovels to be dispensed their medication through an awful hatch in the wall and to be treated as they were in the past? Is this the Government's intention? Ireland has moved away from such practices. We have moved away from having designated doctors in Ireland. Both private and public patients now sit in the doctor's surgery and no one can tell the difference. It is exactly the same in pharmacies and no one can tell the difference.

The Government is determined that this system of equality, which has come about through long years of negotiation, will come to an end. The Government is determined that pharmacies will be located only in areas of high population. Small towns in County Cork, of which Members are aware, will no longer have local pharmacies because they will not be able to survive. I note the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Billy Kelleher, is in the Chamber. He represents a Cork city constituency, part of which is fairly rural.

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