New President of Irish Pharmacy Union calls for “new relationship with Minister for Health & Children and the HSE” after last Summer’s bitter dispute
Monday, 26 April 2010 08:31
Warning that sector is facing severe financial difficulties as 1,600 jobs lost in last year
Sunday 25 April 2010. Darragh O’Loughlin – who was elected this weekend as President of the Irish Pharmacy Union [IPU] has called for a “new relationship with the Minister for Health and the HSE” after the bitter dispute which saw hundreds of pharmacies close their doors for almost a week and a half last August.
O’Loughlin, from Galway, said that pharmacists have endured significant financial hardship as a result of the severe cuts in fees imposed by the Minister for Health last summer. Research on the impact of the dispute undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC] suggests that as many as 1,600 jobs in the retail pharmacy sector have been lost as a result of the cuts and that average pharmacy net profits have fallen by 38%.
Speaking today O’Loughlin said that the cuts and the unilateral manner in which they were introduced had scarred the profession and undermined its relationship with the Minister for Health & Children and the HSE; “pharmacists are suffering financially but they are also worried about what further shocks may lie ahead because their trust in the Minister and the HSE has been hugely undermined. The challenge now is to establish a new relationship which will enable both sides to work together for the benefit of patients and the wider community.”
O’Loughlin said that patient care was at the heart of the pharmacy profession and there were tremendous opportunities to expand the range of services which pharmacists can offer patients; “we are in the frontline of the country’s health services but we are under-utilised. I believe we can and should be doing much more to promote public health, help patients manage their complex medicine regimes and provide a first port of call for people with health problems. Health services in other countries use the pharmacy profession much more effectively as part of their front line engagement with the public. We must do the same here.”
