Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I always endeavour to honour my commitments. I thank Deputy Brassil for raising this important matter. I genuinely note his keen interest in this area, not just as a pharmacist but as an advocate regarding the role pharmacy has to play from a public health policy point of view in delivering Sláintecare. I have had good and sincere engagements with the Deputy during my time in office and I genuinely acknowledge that and thank him for it.

As the Minister for Health, I value the role pharmacists play in the health service in the delivery of patient care. Community pharmacy is rightly recognised as the most accessible element of our health service, with an unequalled reach in terms of patient contact and access. That is why, as Deputy Brassil correctly states, I have given a clear commitment to commencing a thorough review of the pharmacy contract in 2020. In broad terms, the review will address the role to be played by community pharmacy in the context of Sláintecare and in delivering a multidisciplinary model of service delivery for patients, ensuring clarity of roles, avoidance of duplication and achieving optimum value for money. I recognise already that the IPU has brought forward ideas, proposals and suggestions that it has concerning how pharmacy can do even more in helping to shift services from the acute setting to the community setting, and perhaps ensuring that pharmacists can do more in respect of their scope of practice.

A contractual agreement that is fit for purpose in a health care system that is increasingly seeking to tilt the balance of care towards a strengthened primary care system is now much required. The vision and approach which underpin Sláintecare need to be mapped out for community pharmacy. A primary care model, integrated with other health policies, will require the expansion of both the scope of practice and the range of public services provided in community pharmacy. I am thinking specifically of the successful pilot we had for a minor ailments scheme. That could well be an area of expansion.

In May of this year, as the Deputy rightly reminded me, although I certainly have not forgotten, I addressed the Irish Pharmaceutical Union at the national pharmacy conference in Galway. In my keynote speech, I made a clear commitment to move beyond the arrangements underpinned by the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest, FEMPI, Acts 2009 to 2015, as I have done for other professions, with a view to optimising the role of pharmacists in the years ahead. I stand by that commitment, not to move back to pre-FEMPI arrangements but to move on "to a higher terrain", as I said at the time. I am satisfied that we can agree a new contract next year that will do precisely that. However, in the meantime I am obliged, under law, before the end of this year, to put in place a new framework to maintain a statutory basis for contractor fees as the existing regulations will be revoked from the end of this year, in accordance with the Public Service Pay and Pensions Act 2017.

That is not new information. It is a statement of fact based on an Act that this House passed.

Prior to the making of the new regulations, I am required to consult the representative body for pharmacy contractors, the IPU. In that respect this statutory consultation is under way. My officials wrote to the IPU on 10 October inviting it to attend discussions on the making of the new regulations. Meetings were subsequently held in my Department at an official level on 24 October and 7 November, following which a detailed and welcome submission was received from the IPU. That submission is being considered by my Department and I have agreed to a request from the IPU that I would meet it directly in the coming weeks. I assure Deputy Brassil that no decision has yet been made in this regard. The Deputy will, I hope, understand and appreciate that while a statutory consultation process is under way I am somewhat limited in terms of what I can say. However, we have received the detailed submission from the IPU. It is being given the most serious consideration. I am conscious of the fact that we will be entering contract negotiations at the start of 2020 and that the sequencing of these issues needs to be considered.

I expect to see discussions on a new contract begin early in the new year. I fully believe that community pharmacy contractors have an important contribution to make in realising my future vision - indeed, it is the Deputy's also - for community care which needs to be enabled by a modern fit-for-purpose contractual relationship with the HSE.

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