Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Labour Party is opposed to the proposal for dealing with this matter for two reasons. The first of these is that the format is not satisfactory. Last week, I called for a debate in the House on a report from the committee which spent a great deal of time considering and discussing this matter. Such a debate should be accompanied by a resolution on which the House could agree. This would give a direction to the Minister for Health and Children and the HSE on what is to be done about this long drawn-out dispute which should have been settled long ago.

The second reason is that while the debate proposed will be useful to ventilate opinions on the dispute, it will not deal with the problem which will arise at the weekend, namely, that this new contract will be implemented by the HSE on 1 March irrespective of what is stated here and irrespective of the consideration given to the matter by the independent body established under Mr. Sean Dorgan.

When the matter was before the committee, my colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, proposed the following motion:

That no changes be made to contracts between the HSE and community pharmacists in advance of the setting up and reporting of an independent body, whose remit will be to make recommendations on the reimbursement to pharmacists for drugs supplied under the State's community drugs schemes, in consultation with the interests concerned.

All week I have been listening to the Tánaiste and Ministers saying we should not prejudge independent bodies set up to examine various matters. An independent body has been set up to examine this dispute which has been going on for a long time, which threatens the future of many community pharmacists and which is causing enormous concern to medical card holders, pensioners and people who do not know whether they will get their prescriptions where they normally get them.

The changing of the contract on 1 March should be put on hold until the independent body has examined this. Will the Tánaiste change the format of today's statements so that we can debate a resolution, perhaps the one proposed by Deputy Jan O'Sullivan at the committee last week? If not, will the Tánaiste give an assurance that the implementation of this measure will be put on hold until the independent body has done its work?

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