Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment. This could and should be introduced in 2017. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that women with medical cards will be able to obtain emergency contraception without presenting a prescription. In April 2015, the pharmacists passed a motion at their annual conference calling on the HSE to make the morning-after pill available to women with medical cards directly from the pharmacy free of charge.It was reported at the time in Journal.iethat pharmacists claimed that making women with medical cards attend their doctor for a prescription in order to obtain the pill free of charge was farcical, discriminatory and unacceptable.

As Deputy Daly pointed out, the average waiting time for a GP appointment has trebled in five years, to 34 hours in 2015. It is even more for GMS doctors in low-income areas, where there are fewer doctors and tend to be longer waiting times. In addition, a medical card patient does not have the luxury of shopping around for another doctor who can see her faster. She has to go to the GMS doctor with whom she is registered.

As for the argument that I believe was made at on earlier Stage, namely, that anybody can go into a pharmacy and buy the pill without a prescription, that only applies to those who can afford €35. The What's Left survey by the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 483,000 people have no money left at the end of the month. Many of them are people with medical cards. The income of a single woman living alone or with friends would have to be €184 or less per week to qualify. Therefore, €35 would be more than one fifth of one's weekly income. It is clear that there is an unarguable case for this amendment. It needs to be taken on board and implemented next year.

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