Pharmacy Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

There has been quite a degree of confusion on this and so it is very useful to set out the circumstances of it. As part of the community pharmacy agreement in 2025, all the parties agreed to introduce improved controls for phased dispensing. That would ensure that patients on high-risk medications such as antipsychotics or opioids are appropriately targeted with support for phased dispensing rather than getting everything in one go.
It is important that I clarify the difference between phased dispensing and what has become known as blister packs. The State has supported phased dispensing because it is a crucial patient safety initiative with antipsychotics and opioid drugs. The State has supported phased dispensing for medical card holders since 1996 and will continue to do so; there is no change in relation to that. Community pharmacies receive an additional service fee for that service. The State does not fund and never has funded blister packs. There is no change to that service. There has been no removal of that service because that service did not exist funded by the State.
It is important to say from a patient safety perspective that while I, as a non-medic, anecdotally perceive blister packs as a patient safety initiative, the evidence that I am getting both from the pharmaceutical regulator and from the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics is that it is not in fact a patient safety initiative and that health outcomes are not in fact changed by blister packs. However, we regard them as convenient and important particularly for elderly people and that is an important part of the consideration.
Internationally the guidance is that blister packs should be a last resort with patients being supported by many other interventions. Nevertheless, I recognise that they are helpful but they have never been funded by the State. As I said before in this House, there are three groups of patients. I might come back to it because I am out of time.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22