Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

Indeed. It is easy for me to say what I am going to say next. Everybody should be encouraged to build a relationship with a pharmacist, just as we build a relationship with a doctor. I had a meeting today with two pharmacists who made the same point as Senator Minihan made and which he knows from experience, as he was the manager of a pharmacy. A pharmacist may have more time to speak to a patient than a busy doctor in a busy surgery. He or she will take the time to explain that the prescribed medicine may interfere with other prescribed medication. Patients should be made aware of the side effects of medication and the hazardous effects of jumping from pharmacy to pharmacy. The nation would be better off financially and health-wise if patients did not change pharmacies. Senator Minihan has worked in a pharmacy. He is not a pharmacist but has managed a pharmacy and can speak first-hand about his experience.

I commend the Minister highly for introducing the Bill and the one she will introduce next week. During the years Ministers for Health have talked about bringing forward a pharmacy Bill and a medical practitioners Bill. I acknowledge that doctors will have their turn next week; therefore, I will not refer to that Bill.

This Bill was first mooted in June 2005 in a two-page document. Rather than introduce the Bill then, the Minister spent 18 months working on it. Today she has introduced an excellent 62-page document. While we do not agree with some of the proposals, it is to be hoped these can be dealt with on Committee Stage. I welcome all areas of the Bill which is innovative and has been worth the wait.

I refer to proposals on the membership of the board. I take my hat off to the Minister. It will be argued that in other countries there is not a lay majority on either the medical council or the pharmacy society but I ask what is wrong with how it is beginning. This country introduced a smoking ban before anywhere else in the world and we were hailed from the highest heaven. I do not see anything wrong with the proposals. It is not a question of bringing people in off the street and appointing them as political appointees. The Minister will nominate good people to the board. I have first-hand experience, as I served as a lay member of An Bord Altranais and the Medical Council. I met no other non-medical person serving on either of those boards who did not have at heart the interests of the society they were representing.

I am delighted to see pharmacists will have fitness to practise procedures. Pharmacists will welcome this provision, as it means safety for them but most of all it will provide safeguards to ensure patient safety. I presume the procedure and sanctions will be similar to those of the Medical Council, the three lower procedures being to advise, admonish and censure and the more serious being suspension with or without conditions. The final procedure involves erasure. These procedures ensure safety for the practitioner, as well as the patient.

I am delighted to note that section 17 of the Bill allows for registration of the pharmacy unit as well as the pharmacist, an issue to which Senator Minihan alluded. The Minister really means business because any breach of the conditions of the Bill will carry serious penalties. I hope if conditions are breached, that the penalties will be doled out to the offender.

Some parts of the Bill will require tweaking. Senator O'Rourke alluded to Irish graduates being unable to enter the market elsewhere in Europe. Many UK graduates practise in Ireland. I am delighted that the derogation has been dropped. There are few places available in the pharmacy schools in this country. Therefore, it is to be welcomed that Irish people can go abroad to the United Kingdom to be trained where the training provided is second to none. It differs from the Irish model in that students learn the theory as well as the practice and such graduates make excellent pharmacists.

The relationship between subscriber and dispenser has been outlined by other speakers. I refer the Minister to the blueprint by which medical centres were established. They were set up as multidisciplinary centres with the doctor as the mainstay, as well as with a nurse, a physiotherapist, possibly a dietician and other related health professionals. Pharmacists and dentists are out in the community, with whoever else we as patients need to consult.

I look forward to Committee Stage and hope the Minister will consider the contributions made by Senators. It has come across loud and clear from both the pharmaceutical society and the pharmaceutical union that she has given an amount of time to both bodies and has listened to their concerns and taken them on board, for which I compliment her.

The problem faced by hospital pharmacists came to my attention only this morning. They may have patients coming in and out of hospital on a regular basis, in particular cancer patients, some paediatric patients and others with mental health conditions. Chemo drugs for cancer patients are dispensed through the hospital pharmacy. Certain paediatric conditions may require blood testing on a daily basis, in conjunction with the dispensing of medication and it makes sense that this is dispensed from the hospital pharmacy. Psychiatric patients are sometimes hospitalised while this takes place. Hospital pharmacists have genuine concerns and, while I have read the Bill, I am not sure if section 5 addresses the point. Will a hospital pharmacist have to become a retail unit to continue dispensing as a hospital pharmacist? I see the Minister is shaking her head so I hope that is not the case. I hope they will fall under this legislation and be regulated as their colleagues in the community pharmacies are regulated.

Fitness to practise and all the other things introduced by this legislation should also apply to hospital pharmacists. We do not hear much from them and until today, to my shame, I have never given them much thought. These pharmacists look after sick people in acute hospital beds and now that I am aware of them I will push their case with the Minister and will raise it with her on Thursday.