Blister Packs: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-16
============================================================

David Cullinane (SF), Waterford

I will clear a number of things up for the Minister, who is not here, because she seems to think we do not understand how this works or what issues are at play here. We have never said that every patient has had blister packs paid for. That was never the case. We also understand, and I acknowledged this at the time the community pharmacy agreement was being reached, that phased dispensing was being used by some pharmacists to offset the cost of blister packs. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of that, which is what I said to the Minister in my opening remarks, what is undeniable is vulnerable patients are now being told they will have to pay. Whatever about the indirect or unorthodox way it was paid for in the past, that does not really matter to those patients right now. That is where the Government and the Minister are tone deaf.
I have no problem with transparency when it comes to the Minister, the Government or pharmacists. I have no problem with what the Minister called "targeted probity processes" being put in place to examine what pharmacists were or were not doing. That is a matter for the Government, the regulator and pharmacists, but what was missing entirely from the Minister's opening speech was any empathy for people who are now left high and dry. That was what was missing - that human empathy where very vulnerable patients are now being told they are going to have to pay. What I am saying, and I do not understand why this would be in any way a mystery to the Government or seen in any way as radical, is the State should pay for those vulnerable patients.
We all signed up to the spirit and logic of Sláintecare, where we want a transition to a single-tier health service that is free at the point of delivery. I hope that is where we are going. We have had a couple of examples over the past number of weeks and months, where I have had to seriously ask myself whether this Government is committed to that. It is not unreasonable to ask a Government, in circumstances where vulnerable patients are now being left high and dry, to do its job. As was said, the Government knew when it negotiated this agreement and, as it saw it, tightened up on the rules in relation to phased dispensing, that this was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen. I warned the Government, it did not listen and now we have very upset, vulnerable patients who have been left high and dry. It is simply not good enough. It is not good enough, by the way, that the Government will say it is not opposing the motion but will then not do anything about it. It has to go and negotiate with pharmacists and put in place a long-term solution for those people it has abandoned.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-16