Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the House today on Second Stage of the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2010. The Bill provides for the charging of modest fees in respect of prescribed items dispensed by community pharmacy contractors to persons who have full eligibility under the Health Act 1970, that is, medical card holders. The Bill provides for a charge of 50 cent per item prescribed by a registered medical practitioner, dentist or nurse and dispensed by a community pharmacy contractor. The maximum amount payable will be €10 per family per month. The charges are being introduced on foot of a budget 2010 decision to address the rising costs in the general medical services, GMS, scheme. The scheme also seeks to influence demand and prescribing patterns in the GMS, in a modest way.

We have not set out in the Bill to make the level of savings of the order of €200 million and more which we are already achieving in respect of the prices of drugs and the cost of distributing and dispensing drugs. Nor is it of the scale of the savings we expect to achieve in coming years by introducing reference pricing and generic drug substitution. However, every saving and every contribution counts. This change could raise approximately €2 million per month. Every saving achieved by and for the HSE Vote will reduce, though not eliminate, the pressure on funding for front line services, from hospitals, home help and home care packages to mental health services and services for people with disabilities and their families.

It is important given our current financial situation that we take every possible step to provide public services efficiently, to limit costs to the greatest extent possible, and to involve users of resources in better understanding of the value of those resources and their appropriate use. We are doing this very much in a pragmatic way in the context of Ireland today, including not only the national finances, but also our own patterns of prescribing and usage of drugs and the costs we face.

Almost 1.55 million people, or 35% of the population, are medical card holders. Payments to pharmacies under the GMS scheme increased from €748 million in 2004 to €1.129 billion in 2008. This cost increased by a further €50 million to reach €1.179 billion in 2009, despite a reduction in the fees paid to pharmacists from July last year and ongoing reductions in the prices of off-patent medicines.

See this speech in context