Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I have raised this issue previously in the Seanad and with the Department. It relates to pharmaceutical assistants. The pharmaceutical association made a recommendation to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, recently that pharmaceutical assistants, most of whom have operated and worked in pharmacies for the past 35 years, should only be allowed to cover up to one hour per day in place of the pharmacist. That is fine but those people have been doing that job for 35 years during which time they were able to provide cover if the pharmacist was ill or on holidays. They brought a great deal of life experience to their work in pharmacies for the past 35 years but the association is trying to tell them now that their qualification does not mean anything. Those people went to college for four years. They did the practical side to the work. It was like an apprenticeship in that they learned about the different medicines. A number of them have taken part in upskilling and training to which pharmacists and their assistants are entitled. Continuing education is the best way to describe that.

I have had contact from a number of pharmaceutical assistants across the country who are very concerned that they will be seen now as unemployable because they will be only be able to cover in the pharmacy for up to one hour and, if these regulations go through, they will only be able to dispense repeat prescriptions and not any new prescriptions. That means if a customer comes into the pharmacy with a new prescription when the pharmacist is not present, the pharmaceutical assistant will have to tell that person to come back in an hour when the pharmacist is back or else send the person to another pharmacy down the road. That is not acceptable.

I received a number of emails from people on the issue. The pharmaceutical assistants have taken this very seriously and have made their own submission on it. In terms of some of the things they are looking for, they say the following: it should be compulsory that all pharmaceutical assistants take part in the further education and training which is open to them; pharmaceutical assistants should be included in a core competency framework, similar to that which applies to pharmacists; all pharmaceutical assistants on the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, PSI, register should be required to undergo a practice to review with the Irish Institute of Pharmacy; the PSI rules 2015 should be amended to extend mandatory continuing professional development, CPD, to which I referred already, to pharmaceutical assistants; and the Pharmacy Act 2007 should be amended to make fitness to practise applicable to all pharmaceutical assistants.

The pharmaceutical assistants are taking this matter seriously and have submitted their own options but they are concerned that if the regulations being suggested by the pharmaceutical association were brought into play by the Minister, their jobs would become obsolete. Why did they spend four years going to college and the past 35 years working in pharmacies if they are now to become unemployable? I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's response.