Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Before I get to my contribution, I would like to outline my solidarity with those who have been illegally kidnapped from the Global Sumud Flotilla by the Israelis. I ask the Government to fulfil its obligations to ensue safe passage. There were promises made earlier. We think of Senator Chris Andrews and I believe Barry Heneghan may be taken in the next number of days. We need to make sure we do absolutely everything we can from our point of view to protect the Irish citizens and those who are not.

On the community pharmacy agreement, there is nobody who, if they were asked a number of years ago, would not want it to be the case where they did not necessarily have to go to the GP for X, Y and Z and they could make a journey to the pharmacy to deal with small ailments, particularly colds and flus and on behalf of young children and the multiple issues they deal with. While I welcome many of the changes with the introduction of the CPA, like my two colleagues, this should only be the start of putting a full framework in place and that we can deal with all the services that communities pharmacies should be able to employ. That relates to everything, including emergency medicines or cardiac checks. We all know people who have been incredibly lucky to get in hospital at the right time when they had such a check - others have not been - whether it related to anything from a small procedure right through to quadruple bypasses. However, we could increase the number of people detected before we are dealing with a disaster scenario if we could have those sort of checks done in community pharmacies, which could be very simple, cheap and a lot cheaper for the State in the long run, not to mention much better it would be for society and for that person and their wider family.

There is nobody who will not talk about the high cost of medicines, which is something that needs to be addressed. While trying to provide community pharmacies with greater power to deliver for all the citizens, the fact is that hospitals can be overrun, particularly at this time of year. We all know the issues there have been. With regard to UHL, not a week goes by without a significant number of cases. Even when it comes to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, people rarely say anything bad about staff but they talk about staff who are under severe pressure due to the number and nature of complaints. There are a lot of people who end up going to the accident and emergency department because they cannot get a GP appointment.

Even though we have all called for this not to happen, we have even seen cases in which people unfortunately believed that because of these difficulties, their best bet was to ring an ambulance. Such practices do not improve the situation but they definitely put services under more pressure. Obviously, everything that can be advanced needs to be advanced in relation to community pharmacists to take that pressure off.

If we are talking about common conditions, minor illnesses and ailments, that is one thing, but when we are talking about chronic disease management and medicines management, there is definitely a greater role for community pharmacists in delivery. It is like what I said previously in relation to cardiac care, but it probably has a much wider application in this instance. We have to get into the idea of preventative healthcare. I am talking about screening, blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol checks, and making sure we do this in a proper way. When you speak to your family and your wider circle, you become aware of people who caught things early. Regardless of whether serious medical attention was needed or it was something pretty small, it was definitely a lot less than it could have been. We have all seen the horror cases of those who did not have screening done or did not have checks done, or did not have them done in time, and had to suffer. When we are talking about anything right through from cancer care to cardiac care, we must emphasise that anything that can be done from the point of view of improving circumstances is good.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh spoke about the idea of waste in relation to blister packs, etc. There are many means by which this whole thing can be streamlined, but it is straightforward. This is a very good thing to do. It is vital that the community pharmacy agreement was introduced, but it is just a starting point. We are literally building the foundations. We need to ensure we empower pharmacists to the greatest degree possible to deliver for those out there. If healthcare can be taken away from hospitals and from GPs who are under pressure, and if those preventative pieces can be advanced, it will improve everything across the board for these people and for society in general.

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