THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) said last night it believed the injunction granted yesterday to a Co Limerick pharmacist preventing it from changing the way he is paid for dispensing medicines under the community drug schemes applied only to this particular case and had no wide-ranging implications.
However, informed sources in the pharmacy sector said if the HSE sought to treat the injunction as a "one-off" arrangement it was likely a number of other pharmacists would go to the courts seeking a similar measure.
Following the decision by the High Court to grant an injunction to Niall O'Sullivan pending the outcome of forthcoming full legal proceedings, the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) called on the HSE to suspend its controversial new payment system for pharmacists.
In a statement last night, the IPU welcomed the decision of the High Court.
However, a spokesman for the union said it was "regrettable" that individual pharmacists had to resort to court actions.
The spokesman said, "It would be far more preferable for the HSE to engage in meaningful negotiations with the union and deal with matters in an orderly and constructive manner.
"The union now calls upon the HSE to sit down with us in an attempt to find a formula to resolve all issues in this dispute," he said.
A spokesman for the HSE said the decision of the court to grant the injunction did not reflect the merits of the substantive case which was still to be heard by the commercial court. The HSE maintained there were no wide-ranging implications arising from yesterday's court ruling and that it applied only to Mr O'Sullivan.
There are already a number of other legal challenges in the pipeline against the new payment system for pharmacists which the HSE introduced unilaterally from the beginning of this month.
Under the new system, the HSE reduced the margin paid to pharmaceutical wholesalers from 17 per cent to 8 per cent, in a bid to save €100 million.
As it has no direct relationship with wholesalers, to achieve its aim the HSE reduced the reimbursement it pays to pharmacists for drugs and medicines.
The HSE argues that the current 17 per cent margin is shared between the wholesalers and the pharmacists in the form of discounts. It has contended that the margin previously paid to wholesalers was double the European average.
However, the IPU has argued that the measure will result in up to 300 pharmacy outlets being forced out of business, with the potential loss of up to 5,000 jobs.
Any successful moves by large numbers of pharmacists to prevent the implementation of the new payment system could have serious effects on the HSE's finances.
The HSE has already factored the €100 million savings to be generated under the new scheme into its financial plans for the year.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm warned last week that if the money did not come from savings on drug costs, it would have to come from frontline services.
