Health (Provision of Contraception Prescribing Service in Retail Pharmacy Businesses) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-15
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

Like everything, it is better to start something and develop it rather than wait for something else. We are trying to start so much with pharmacists. It is important to remind everyone about the national condom distribution scheme too, which we are expanding to pharmacies on a phased basis. Obviously condoms are not prescription items and do not have to be covered by this legislation. Pharmacists do not have to prescribe them as such. Free condoms are being made available in pharmacy consulting rooms. Access is being phased into pharmacies in different regions.
By the time we launch that scheme, participating pharmacies will be able to access a free condom supply for their consulting room so they can offer them to people who might need them, which is a good thing. For reasons of patient safety, it is better to begin a scheme like this in a structured way. The scheme expands access more broadly and it achieves the goal of trying to get pharmacies to do more while making life easier for women generally, which I am a big fan of. Let us start this and see how and where it goes. If the clinical advice changes on the operation of this scheme, we can come back to it. Let us start this well and move forward with it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-15