REACTION:THE GOVERNMENT has no plans to appoint a mediator to try to bring about a settlement to the dispute involving pharmacists and the Health Service Executive.
The dispute has led to several hundred pharmacists withdrawing from State drug schemes and the closure of chemist shops in a number of areas yesterday.
Government sources said last night there would be no rowing back on controversial cutbacks in fees to pharmacists of up to €133 million introduced by Minister for Health Mary Harney last month.
The sources said that regulations which introduced the cuts would be reviewed next summer along with those put in place for other health professionals. As part of this review pharmacists would be entitled to make submissions.
However, Government sources said the Minister could not, under competition law, negotiate on fee levels with the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU), which represents high street pharmacists.
The IPU, which has been seeking a meeting with Ms Harney unsuccessfully for several weeks, again yesterday called for the appointment of a mediator.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly also called on the Taoiseach to appoint a mediator. He urged both sides in the dispute “to scale back their quarrel in the interests of patients”.
The pharmacy union said patients all over the country encountered widespread delays and supply problems yesterday and the situation would deteriorate. It said pharmacies that were continuing to dispense under the State drug schemes were coming under unsustainable pressure. Prescriptions were taking up to eight hours to be filled and that in some cases people were being told to come back today.
The union said the counties most affected yesterday were Mayo, Donegal, Carlow, Waterford, north Dublin, Wexford, Kerry, Offaly, Clare and Galway.
The HSE said that outside of the 500 or so pharmacies that had submitted valid termination notices to withdraw from State schemes, only a small minority of other outlets were closed. It said 75 per cent of pharmacies continued to provide services under State schemes.
A HSE spokeswoman said there had been a concerted attempt by a small number of pharmacists to cause disruption in a bid to gather momentum for their campaign.
The pharmacy union said all pharmacies in the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal were closed yesterday, as were the majority of outlets in Mayo and Kerry. It said that in Waterford only one pharmacy was reported to be dispensing to medical card patients while in north Dublin many outlets were shut.
It said all pharmacies in Carlow town were reported closed with some pharmacies in Kilkenny open for just two hours.
Some pharmacies in Drogheda were open for emergencies only for limited periods but most were reported not to be dispensing under drugs schemes, the union added.
It also said two pharmacies in Newbridge, Co Kildare, were reported to be under extreme pressure, with patients facing six- to eight-hour delays.
The HSE said its temporary dispensing centres around the country, set up to alleviate the effects of the dispute, were “busy but manageable” yesterday. Patients did not have to wait for particularly long periods, the HSE said.
Irish Pharmacy Union president Liz Hoctor said its members had raised serious concerns about the safety of the HSE’s 10 temporary dispensaries.
“One pharmacist in Kerry who checked the prescriptions dispensed to 11 of his patients by the HSE dispensary said eight of them had been filled incorrectly,” she said.