Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The independent body has been asked to report by the end of May. While I have not spoken to the individuals involved, I understand they intend to meet that timeframe and have already had a number of meetings. In fact, I saw an advertisement in the newspapers yesterday inviting submissions. Their intention is to talk to and engage with the various stakeholders and obviously to commission independent support and economic expertise to help them in their work.

I am not prepared to change the terms of reference. Senator Fitzgerald is asking me to have mark-ups and discounts. What we are talking about here is a temporary contract. We want to pay a fee for the expertise which the pharmacist brings to the health care system, namely, the dispensing of medication. It is not desirable that we continue with a situation where we have roughly double the distribution margin that applies across the European Union, including Northern Ireland.

We will never get to the desired situation if we are taking money out of the system. Notwithstanding these savings, the cost of drugs this year will be substantially higher than last year. I presented the Department's strategy for 2008-10 to the Cabinet today and I commented on the fact that in recent years the number of items dispensed through the GMS has increased from 20 million to 41 million per year, even though the growth in medical cards was approximately 5% in the same period. That is the reality of modern medicine and will continue to be the case. I will not be back here next year with the drugs bill reduced by €100 million; it will still be rising rapidly. What we are trying to do is to halt the increase and take out moneys that are surplus to what we believe is necessary to have a vibrant, functioning market.

On the issue of rural pharmacies, the same claims that this would spell the end of the pharmacy in rural Ireland were made in 2002 when the restrictions were removed by the then Minister, Deputy Martin. At that time, one had to be a certain geographic distance from a current pharmacy before one could open a new one. It did not have that effect. I genuinely believe that those pharmacies with low volumes of dispensing and those heavily dependent on medical card and GMS patients will do substantially better with the higher dispensing fee of at least €5 — it may well be substantially higher following the work of the Dorgan group.

Vibrant markets always attract new entrants — I made this point in the other House last week and I made the same point to solicitors when PIAB was being introduced. In any developed, well-off society like ours, professionals always do well — that is a fact. Whether we are talking about health care professionals, accountants, engineers or lawyers, professionals do well in well-developed countries, and this is a very well-developed and prosperous country where huge opportunities will exist.

With regard to overheads, I am not an expert on how to run any business and I will not get into the situation of auditing anybody's accounts. I understand that last year a pharmacy on Grafton Street, one of two owned by Hickeys, closed down despite being on one of the busiest streets in the country.