Health (Provision of Contraception Prescribing Service in Retail Pharmacy Businesses) Bill 2026: Second and Subsequent Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-16 ============================================================ Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire I am pleased to introduce the Health (Provision of Contraception Prescribing Service in Retail Pharmacy Businesses) Bill 2026 to the Seanad. The Bill proposes to include pharmacists as prescribers of contraception in clearly defined clinical circumstances, in addition to their existing role in dispensing. It will also ensure that the service will be available free of charge under the free contraception scheme. It is a big expansion of what we have been trying to do for women. The plans for this were published in 2025. We had a comprehensive engagement with stakeholders and pharmacy sector representatives. To enable pharmacy prescription, the Bill needs to amend the Health Act 1970, the Irish Medicines Board Act 1995 and the Pharmacy Act 2007. The service will involve the prescription of short-acting contraception, such as the contraceptive pill, the patch and the ring, by pharmacists, who already supply emergency contraception. The service will be free of charge to women aged 17 to 35, who are covered by the free contraception scheme. It will also be available to private patients with the fees for this service determined locally by the pharmacy. It is almost certainly going to be less costly and more convenient than returning to a GP for every prescription. People would have to go to the GP in the first instance for the first prescription, but thereafter for the next four and a half years they can go back to the pharmacy and get the prescription renewed there. It is likely to be cheaper for those private patients and much more convenient. The clinical basis for pharmacies prescribing is provided for in the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2024 and similar to the common conditions service, regulations for this service are going to have to be published after the Bill is enacted. The Bill and the secondary legislation, training and clinical protocols that will follow it will support the terms and conditions for this service, as laid out in the community pharmacy agreement. I will take Senators through the provisions of the Bill. Section 1 amends the definition of "scheme provider", previously limited to medical practitioners, for the provision of prescriptions. The Bill expands the definition to include retail pharmacy businesses entering into an agreement with the HSE for the provision of primary prescription services to women. It will be provided by a registered pharmacist in accordance with the relevant pharmacy legislation, including this Bill. Section 2 of the Bill makes various amendments to the Irish Medicines Board Act and the Pharmacy Act. Those amendments ensure that whole legislative framework is cross-referenced correctly. Section 4, the final section, provides the Short Title for the commencement of the Bill. Sections 1 to 3, along with the clinical statutory instruments to be drafted, align the relevant Acts to accurately define the new service. The sections also provide for clinical protocols, rules, codes of conduct and training provisions for pharmacists who would like to provide the new service, and I hope they will be many. I would also like to note that I introduced amendments in the Dáil to remove the term "medical devices" from the Bill. That followed confirmation from the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland and the Health Products Regulatory Authority that the patch and ring are classified as medicinal products, not medical devices. That is just a correction there. To sum up, the most important thing is that the Bill will improve access to hormonal contraception, including but not limited to the free contraception scheme. It will widen the range of services that can be delivered in the convenience of one's local pharmacy. It will improve patient choice and convenience. It will save money for private patients and, separately, for the State, by reducing costs for the free contraception scheme. It is going to provide essential additional capacity for additional women's health measures. We have spent a lot of time trying to expand what pharmacies can do. We now have a common conditions service where you can go to a pharmacy instead of a GP to get a diagnosis and prescription for eight basic conditions like conjunctivitis or urinary tract infections - the kind of things that just come up in people's lives all the time. We would like to expand more and more what pharmacies can do. They are the first point of contact for medical contact. Pharmacists are extremely well trained. They have been in university for five and often six years. They are exceptionally good medical practitioners and they are trusted by the community. I want to see more done much more naturally in a pharmacist's than in a GP clinic. We can expand access to GPs, who will have the commensurate space in their practices due to people going to pharmacies for common condition services and the free contraception scheme. This will free up space otherwise needed for more complex consultations in GP surgeries. We are trying to move as much as we can into pharmacies. 2026 is a big year for that because we have launched the common conditions service and now have 95% of pharmacists signed up to it. People can go in and pay €30 or €35, whatever it happens to be, and get a quick diagnosis and a prescription there and then. Now we are adding this as well, for the convenience of women. Yes, that first prescription has to come from a GP because we know that many women have complex conditions, maybe blood pressure, or are of a certain age whereby there has to be an initial clinical assessment done. Thereafter they will go back to the pharmacist to get their blood pressure checked, have a consultation and have the prescription renewed for the next four and a half years. It is a fantastic thing for expanding women's health and access to healthcare generally. I hope the Seanad will agree. --- 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/seanad/2026-07-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-16