Mary Henry (Independent)

I wish to share time with Senator Quinn.

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome the majority of the Bill's provisions, including the updating of the terminology, fines and the deregulation of ready-readers. While the institute of opticians has naturally been in contact with Members, I have also had contact from the college of ophthamologists. The Minister recognised their concerns about the use of the phrase, "the treatment of eye disease", by stating that an amendment would be tabled by him on Committee Stage. I am glad of that because it saves my trying to fight for it.

I share the concerns about the extension of the use of drugs for the eye. One thing that should cheer the Minister is that I wish fewer people could prescribe less rather that more and that, while these drugs affect the eye only, we must be careful that something that affects the eye does not have a systemic effect or have side-effects within the eye which we did not suspect at the time. For example, Chloramphenicol eye ointment was widely used at one stage until it was found to be capable of causing agranular cytosis. I used it, as did many others, and we thought it was wonderful. While one says these drugs are just being applied to the eye, the sight of the person is terribly important, as is their general health. We know that some of these drugs have side-effects and I am concerned that the local application may mask problems in the general system which, because the person does not have medical training, they will not recognise. I ask the Minister to consider these matters before Committee Stage.

The Minister says this brings matters into line from an EU perspective. However, the only optometrists who can prescribe drugs in the EU are in the UK and the Netherlands. I do not know the situation in the Netherlands, but in the UK optometrists have to do an extra year in a hospital and an examination at the end of that year. We are not introducing that here.