YOUR editorial (August 8) supports the stance of the Minister for Health who has implemented cuts to pharmacists’ income far in excess of anything asked of any other sector — after seven years of refusing to talk to the representatives of community pharmacy and after herself being found in breach of contract in the High Court last year.
She implemented these drastic cuts against the advice of independent financial consultants who warned her that to do this would seriously destabilise the community pharmacy system.
You add insult to injury when you go on to refer to community pharmacists as "sectional interests who stand between this society and the possibility of economic recovery".
Community pharmacies have been one of the few elements of Ireland’s health system that actually works.
Typically open for extended hours, seven days a week, they provide prompt, efficient service to patients. They complement the overstretched and under-resourced urban GP services, providing free advice about minor ailments.
Community pharmacists are not merely retailers of medicines — they provide a professional service ensuring the prescriptions written for their customers are correct and appropriate for their conditions and protecting them from the unintentional adverse effects of prescribing.
Poor access for patients, long waiting times, queues and unpleasant surroundings — the trademarks of the Irish health service — simply have never existed in the community pharmacy service.
The minister’s claim that her excessive cuts are needed in the national financial interest might have some vestige of respectability had she not already squandered the entire amount she plans to take from community pharmacists on pay increases for hospital consultants.
Tim Delaney Gordon Street Ringsend Dublin 4
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, August 12, 2009
