Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

On the first matter, the statements tomorrow will be beneficial to the House. As the Deputy has said, the Joint Committee on Health and Children has dealt with this matter extensively. As a result of its work and discussions, it has succeeded in bringing some clarity to the issues, unlike the advocacy positions of the various parties concerned. The establishment of a three-person committee under Mr. Dorgan to examine the prescription fee issue and determine how an independent process can take place, where all the parties can go and have the matter resolved on an arbitration basis, is the sensible way forward, given all of the discussion that has taken place. Regarding the HSE and the contract situation on 1 March, the Minister will be able to give an update tomorrow as to what the position is as we face into that date.

It is important to point out that we are trying to arrive at a situation which will be more beneficial to the smaller community pharmacies, on the basis of the rearrangement of the fee structure for those who have large dispensing business practices, helping medical card people and so forth. Those with much larger pharmacies will be in a position to deal with the discount issue between the wholesalers and retailers, which is currently in addition to the mark-up and the prescription fee. It is a question of value for money for the taxpayer at the end of the day. That has to be part of the equation. We would not like to see any unnecessary disruption of the provision of pharmacy services and I do not see why that should be the case. It is an independent process that is now being arranged.

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