Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister and the Bill. To say it is long awaited is to put it mildly as the existing pharmacy regulation is 130 years old. The medical practitioners legislation is 30 years old. Even though the regulation is 130 years old, one never hears about pharmacists — community, hospital or industrial — getting themselves into trouble or kicking up a storm or being demanding. They must be among the quietest professionals in the country. I know a number of them and acknowledge that they are the unsung heroes of the health professions. I do not say this because there are some present in the Visitors Gallery.

I grew up in Tullamore, a small town in the midlands. My parents knew their pharmacist all their lives, as they had grown up with him. When the doctor was not available or sometimes when there may not have been money available to go to the doctor, the pharmacist would have been their first port of call. They were always given good advice and relied upon him. I live in Sligo and have a wonderful pharmacist. I will make him blush because he is in the Visitors Gallery. I use the term "wonderful" because I am known to his father for the past 25 years. I am a creature of habit; I have the same doctor, pharmacist and butcher. I do not like change in my life.