Cowen urged to end drug scheme dispute

PRESSURE is growing on the Taoiseach to cut short his holidays and intervene in the pharmacists’ dispute before patients die, after Health Minister Mary Harney last night refused to appoint a mediator to end the escalating row.

As hundreds of patients, some of them elderly, queued until the early hours of the morning to access urgent medicine, Ms Harney finally broke her silence saying she would not negotiate with pharmacists and threatened legal action against them.

On RTÉ’s Prime Time last night she said: “This is the law. It was enacted by the Oireachtas and was done because of the emergency situation this country finds itself in. This is now the law of the land.”