Taoiseach Brian Cowen has defended the proposed introduction of a prescription charge, saying it reflected the increase in prescribing in the State.
The idea was raised last night by Minister for Health Mary Harney who said she is looking at the introduction of such a fee for medical card holders. The charge could be in the region of 50 cent per item prescribed, she said.
Speaking in Dublin morning Mr Cowen said the charge was a recognition of the situation facing the country.
“We have to try and deal with rising drug costs, rising drug bills that are very much increased. Indeed since 2003 I think the number of prescriptions has increased by 22 million in this country so it [the fee] is just an indication of having to find a sustainable way forward.”
But Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said any move to begin charging medical card holders for prescriptions would represent “an assault on the poorest and sickest” which would only save a fraction of the Budget cuts required.
Dr Reilly said Ms Harney should instead target waste in the health service and focus on the expense of generic drugs.
He said: "The greater use of generic drugs and addressing their cost here, up to 20 times higher than the UK, could yield €300 million."
The Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) also claimed tens of millions of euros could be saved if its members were allowed to offer patients cheaper versions of medicines.
It urged Ms Harney to be cautious about adding a 50 cent fee on every drug prescribed to a medical card holder as part of a range of health service savings in the Budget.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has described the proposal as "a fairly blunt instrument".
Speaking this morning, Dr Ronan Boland, chairman of the IMO's GP committee, said the organisation felt prescription charges "were not really the way go".
He said such charges had been in existence in the United Kingdom for most of the past 50 years but within the past three years Wales, Scotland, and the North had effectively got rid of them, with a wide range of exemptions applying in England.
"In reality, the groups that are exempted in the UK scenario are effectively the people who have medical cards in the first place," he said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
Mr Boland said he was not aware of evidence indicating excessive prescribing by doctors, but he said the State's escalating drugs bill did need to be tackled but added: "We would feel a prescription charge is a fairly blunt instrument".
He also called for the cost of generic drugs to be tackled, saying these were in many cases more expensive than their counterparts in the United Kingdom.
"There is in many cases no clear differential between prescribing a known branded product and a generic product. You have no certainty as regards what saving [is achieved] if any."
He said in certain cases, there was a situation where the generic drug could be more expensive because the State had an agreement with manufacturers that when the drug came off patent, the price would fall, leaving the generic version more expensive, in some instances.
The IMO has presented a plan to the Minister it says could shave €300 million off the State’s drugs bill.
The IMO, which represents GPs, junior doctors and hospital consultants, says the money could be saved by regularly reviewing patients to ensure they do not stay on expensive drugs for longer than necessary, establishing a system under which the State would only pay for drugs if they were going to be of clear benefit to a patient, tackling the relatively high cost of generic drugs in Ireland, and by ensuring more generic rather than more costly branded drugs are prescribed.