Pharmacies lose challenge to Minister's dispensing-fees cut

A GROUP of pharmacies has lost its High Court challenge to the Minister for Health’s decision to impose substantial cuts on fees paid to them for dispensing drugs and services under the community pharmacy agreement.

Mr Justice Bryan McMahon rejected claims by the Haire group of pharmacies that cuts of some 24 per cent introduced last July breached their property rights and rights to equal treatment under the Constitution.

The judge accepted that the cuts, introduced via regulations made under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act of 2009, may be a great burden for some pharmacists.

However he said the State was obliged to achieve its statutory obligations on “a best-value basis”.

Given the “exceptional” threat to the economic wellbeing of the State and its people, the cuts formed part of “a measured, proportionate and carefully drawn” piece of legislation with a number of “significant safeguards” inbuilt.

The Irish Pharmacy Union, the representative body for 1,800 pharmacists, expressed its disappointment at the ruling.

It said: “The union will be taking the opportunity of the forthcoming review of payments by the Minister to demonstrate the impact of the cuts on members.”

While the Haire group had claimed it could become insolvent if the cuts stood, no accountancy evidence to that effect was given to the court, the judge noted.

The Haire group, also known as the Kissanes group, operates pharmacies in Carlow and Kilkenny. It brought its action against the Ministers for Health and Finance, the Government and the Attorney General.

The court was told pharmacists were paid €421 million in fees and mark-ups last year and that Minister for Health Mary Harney had said she planned to reduce payments by €133 million in a full year.

Mr Justice McMahon ruled that the pharmacists had no contractual or property right preventing the Minister changing unilaterally, after consultation, the rates of payment in their contract.

A contractual right was a property right but the pharmacies had no entitlement under the Community Pharmacy Contractors Agreement for their rates of remuneration to continue into the future. The Minister had every right to introduce the cuts, he ruled.

On claims the cuts breached pharmacists’ right to equal treatment given that cuts of 8 per cent were imposed on other health professionals, the judge said no comparative evidence was given of disparate treatment, so the court could not rule on this issue.