This week has probably been the most challenging week in all my 15 years as a community pharmacist. You spend five years at pharmacy school but no training, books or A1 grades can prepare you for dealing with a national crisis and the associated fear so many are feeling due to the uncertainties surrounding it.

WITH recent controversy regarding access to codeine containing analgesics over the counter from your pharmacy, this “Why all the questions...” has come to the fore again.

I WAS dismayed but not surprised to read your report (September 12) regarding the HSE breaking its contract with pharmacists. It was typical of the anti-pharmacist bias which seems to be all too prevalent in Irish journalism.

YOUR report headlined ‘Pharmacists have to swallow similar medicine as taxi drivers’ (Irish Examiner, November 17) contained several inaccuracies and was incorrect in its basic premise that pharmacists are uncompetitive and facing major regulatory liberalisation in the new year.