Sir, - In 1996, an agreement between the Department of Health and existing pharmacies laid down very strict rules and obligations which pharmacies were obliged to observe at risk of losing contract. It also set up boards in each health authority to rule on criteria for new contracts, such as population and distance. Ireland was the only country which had no such agreements before.
Following a critical OECD report , a review body was set up by the Minister for Health and submissions were invited. I made a submission in favour of retention of contract. On February 14th I received a "thank you" note informing me a report would issue within six to 12 months.
However, without waiting for this report, the Minister deregulated pharmacies on January 31st. He said this was on the instruction of Attorney General that the existing arrangement was "ultra vires".
How is it ultra vires now and was not in 1996? Why was legislation not introduced to make it legal? Was this decision driven by PD policy?
Who will lose by this appalling decision? The Diabetes Federation, the Asthma Society, the Parliament for the Elderly have opposed it and asked for a form of regulation. Officials and civil servants in the Department of Health must oppose it, judging by their submission to the Competition Authority on the takeover of the Unicare group of pharmacies by Cahill-May Roberts.
Small towns and villages all over Ireland will in the future be deprived of pharmacies because of movement to large urban areas and cities which already are over-supplied with pharmacies.
I have retired as a community pharmacist, but I see a bad future for independent pharmacies, where foreign chains will dominate with their financial strength. Multinational pharmaceutical wholesalers already own 54 per cent of Norwegian pharmacies.
Future Irish pharmacy graduates will have no chance of pharmacy ownership. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL SHANNON, PHC,
Terenure,
Dublin 6w.
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Sir, - I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a notice in a pharmacist's window informing the public that new Government legislation threatened the existence of the neighbourhood pharmacy and inviting the same public to express their opposition to the legislation by signing a petition in the shop.
Like all monopolies and cartels at risk of losing their privileged position, they are resorting to the penultimate bluff that change would not be in the public interest.
Irish people are well aware of the huge - often 100 per cent - price discrepancies between Irish pharmacies and their European counterparts, which is rather a lot to pay for convenience even if one were naïve enough to think that pharmacy locations were dictated by public interest rather than profit.
Pharmacists will have some task in convincing the public that, unlike every other sector of retailing and service, deregulation and competition are not in the public interest.
Talk to turkeys about signing a petition in support of the traditional Christmas dinner! - Yours, etc.,
MARGARET HICKEY,
Castleowen,
Blarney,
Co Cork.