David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's response in providing clarity on how free HRT will be rolled out. If I am reading what the Minister has said right, there are any number of ways in which this could have been done, including providing free GP consultations, but what the Minister has gone for is free medicines and free products, stating this is the best way to do it. I would like clarity on this point. When the Minister responded, he said there would also have to be a margin for the pharmacist. What does this mean? If the State is paying the cost of a medicine why is there, in this instance, a margin has to be provided to the pharmacist? What will this be? We do not want it to be X amount in pharmacy A and Y amount in pharmacy B with no sense of what the margin is. How do we control this? How do we know what the costs will be? Has the Minister had discussions with the Irish Pharmacy Union? Some clarity on this would be helpful.

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