Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I urge the Minister to rethink this issue. We are fast approaching 1 March, which is only two days away. The Minister should listen to the voices of the majority of members of the Government parties and to the voice of reason, and not listen to her own political ideology and the bullying tactics of the HSE in this regard.

Although the Minister said that nothing will change on 1 March, everything will change. On 1 March, the amount of money given to pharmacists from the HSE with regard to community drugs schemes will be cut by €100 million. It is disingenuous of the Minister to suggest, first, that to have this amount of money taken from the income of any sector of society would not make a huge difference and, second, that, somehow, it is being taken from the wholesalers. It is not being taken from the wholesalers; it is being taken from pharmacists.

The Minister told us that the wholesalers refused to negotiate and invoked competition law. At the same time, she told us the wholesalers are taking a cut with regard to their 8% margin. How can the Minister tell us this when the wholesalers did not negotiate and she and the HSE have no power to in any way interfere with how or what wholesalers provide to pharmacists? This money is coming from pharmacists.

Just a couple of years ago, as the Minster stated, the market was liberalised and opened up under her Progressive Democrats philosophy. I understand approximately 300 new pharmacies were opened, largely by young pharmacists, but the Minister is literally cutting the ground from under them through a unilateral €100 million withdrawal from that sector. Anybody with any sense of reason would have to accept this will have a serious effect and will cause job losses and closures. I cannot see it happening any other way.

We all want to see costs controlled for the good of the public purse. The Minister referred to the providers — the wholesalers — but the cut is being taken directly from the pharmacists. While we will have an opportunity to question the Minister later, I cannot see that the cut will be made in any other way and it is certain it will have an effect, particularly for patients. For their sake, I strongly argue that the Minister should withdraw the 1 March deadline.

We have all met seriously concerned elderly and sick people who visited us. I am thinking of one woman in particular who came to see me in an extremely distressed state because she will lose the services of her local community pharmacist and there is no other pharmacist nearby. She is greatly dependent on her personal relationship with this individual pharmacist, who has a very large mortgage. That person also has a large number of medical card patients. That is the real issue that the backbenchers sitting behind the Minister are concerned about, which they brought to the health committee and on which we had a long series of discussions. There was agreement on all sides of the House.

I accept there is disagreement on the exact wording of the motion that came from the Government side of the House but at the end of the committee process there was an agreed motion that called on all the bodies concerned to take action to find a settlement in advance of 1 March. Even the Government backbenchers will agree that that was the general content of the motion that was finally agreed. The motion that we proposed was voted down. This would have ensured that the message from the health committee was that no action should be taken in advance of the report of the independent body.

I wish to voice my serious concern that all we have been provided with today is time for statements and questions. We do not have an opportunity to vote on this important issue which is getting closer and closer to its deadline.

My colleague, Deputy Michael D. Higgins, will address the issue of rights under competition legislation. He tabled a motion on behalf of the Labour Party to change the Competition Act, if that is the obstacle. I again dispute the Minister's statement that European competition law is an element in this issue. We can change our competition legislation if we want to and we offer that opportunity to the House.

The Labour Party strongly believes in the right of any group of people to have fair process and to representation by their union. That is being denied pharmacists. I see in one of the medical journals today that the assistant national director of the primary care reimbursement service has said that will also very quickly be applied to negotiations involving GPs. It will presumably also be applied to dentists and vets, and it has already been applied to actors under the Government's interpretation of the Competition Act. This cannot be allowed to continue. We on this side of the House, especially in the Labour Party, strongly believe in the principle of the right of fair process and representation. If that is taken away from pharmacists next Saturday, 1 March, we can expect it to be taken away from other sectors of society.

Even the Indecon report commissioned by the Government stated that this decision should be taken slowly and that there should be consultation and agreement before any change is enacted. What we have instead is a unilateral, bullying intention to take €100 million out of the incomes of pharmacists without an opportunity for negotiation and in advance of the report of the independent body, which I commend the Minister on setting up. The Shipsey process was intended to offer that opportunity but, essentially, when the pharmacists got involved in it in good faith and without any preconditions, the process broke down because preconditions were put in place by the Health Service Executive. The pharmacists said they would accept the outcome, whatever it was.

In effect, the HSE approach was that the decision on the outcome would be made before the process even started. That is not acceptable in any democracy and it is particularly not acceptable to us in the Labour Party. I urge the Minster to take the opportunity to draw back from this dispute and to inform us when she answers questions later that she will instruct the HSE not to go ahead with the proposed changes on 1 March, but will wait for the outcome of the independent body's process.

From talking to pharmacists I know they understand there is a need to address cost issues. They understand that there is an issue for smaller pharmacists in particular. I fear that if this decision is implemented the big chains will end up running the pharmacy business. We will end up with a cartel of a very small number of large multinational pharmacy chains running the pharmacy business in Ireland. The ordinary person who has relied in the past on the advice of his or her community pharmacist will no longer have a community pharmacist in any real sense of that term. Instead, large chains will take over small pharmacies. Pharmacists with large mortgages and wage bills have shown me their books and if this change is introduced they will not be able to pay either their mortgages or their staff.

I do not want Ireland to go in that direction. It has happened in other parts of our economy that small businesses have been forced out of business and we should not stand over this happening in the pharmacy sector. One of the aspects of the health service that works is the relationship between community pharmacists and their patients. There is enough wrong with the health service and Deputy Reilly referred to several aspects of it. Every day of the week issues arise regarding the health service. This morning Deputy Gilmore, our party leader, raised the withdrawal of new services for the homeless. That is an absolute scandal. Every day of the week issues like this arise about the delivery of health services and how this affects the most vulnerable patients.

We should not try to fix what is not broken. We should not interfere with the relationship between community pharmacists and their patients. Above all, we should not have this kind of unilateral process without negotiation which will go ahead next March unless the Minister intervenes. There is general agreement among people on all sides of the House in terms of wanting this matter to be dealt with by the independent body through negotiation and by agreement. That can be done and it need not take a long time. It can be done in a month or two. There is a need for goodwill on the side of the Government and on the side of the Health Service Executive, and I appeal to the Minister to exercise that goodwill.

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