World Pharmacists Week: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
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Pádraig Rice (SD), Cork South-Central

Yes. We might engage as a committee on that because a substantial amount of work and hearings went into that report.
That brings me to the point I made previously. We get a lot of statements on the Dáil floor in relation to many issues. We had statements on pharmacy-related issues not too long ago but there are lots of other health issues.
I see this in my work as Chair of the health committee. We get such a number of requests on different issues from Government and Opposition members to discuss particular topics. We probably have about ten requests for every single session of the health committee. One of the challenges I have is trying to get as many of those in as I can. As such, there is a long list of issues that warrant teasing out on the Dáil floor and enough time at the committee and I would welcome some kind of engagement on the topics we could discuss here. Our group and other groups put forward issues at Whips' and Dáil business meetings but they do not often make it onto the agenda. It would be good to engage on some of those and also some of the legislative priorities. We engaged over a year ago on the assisted human reproduction Bill. We were told at the time it was urgent, it was coming and was pressing and the committee rushed our consideration over the summer. We worked over August to do that report and a year on we still do not have legislation. My point is just that this Dáil time is really precious and valuable and there are pressing legislative priorities the Minister and I share but I would like to see some of that time dedicated to those, including the right to healthcare accountability and many other issues that could be addressed, like staffing issues in the health service, funding, CHI - the list goes on. Traveller health is one that, based on that report, needs to make it onto the agenda.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24