John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's response. Forgive me for not being up to date with the matter but 4 February was only yesterday. While many pharmacists who have contacted me, and Deputy O'Reilly and all the other Deputies will be delighted that a pragmatic approach is being taken, one or two issues arose. I was in contact with a number of pharmacists who were partaking in a pilot project to see how it would be implemented. On that pilot project, approximately 80% of the medicines put through the system were returned with a red flag, that is, if the medicine was operational at the time, the pharmacist would not have been able to dispense it even though he or she knew it was perfectly safe to do so.

There is much work required, therefore, to get the system working and operational. Particularly in the hospital setting, space, storage and IT systems are critical. I submitted a parliamentary question about robotic dispensing, which some hospital pharmacies have but most do not. There needs to be a levelling of the playing field in that area.

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