I fully agree and acknowledge this is something the Deputy has been advocating for and pushing on repeatedly. We greatly value the work that pharmacists and pharmacies do in terms of their place within the health and social care service. I fully agree that the practice of pharmacy and the provision of pharmaceutical care has the potential to be substantially enhanced to deliver more care and it can really help in terms of the pressure on patients, GPs, and on primary care. My ambition, and that of the Government, is to work with pharmacists to make sure that we can have them working to the full extent of their practice and training, which they are not at the moment. There are several pieces of work ongoing in the Department with the HSE and in consultation with the Irish Pharmacy Union as well. These include a proposal for implementing a minor ailment scheme. Essentially, this would allow medical card patients to get over-the-counter medicines without having to go the GP for a prescription, which they currently have to do. We are looking at an enhanced role for pharmacists in the current contraceptive scheme, particularly around oral contraction. We are looking at more involvement of pharmacists in the delivery of the seasonal flu vaccine.

For all this to work it is essential we have the availability of the appropriate workforce, so work is also underway to assess emerging risks and opportunities with respect to the ongoing availability of pharmacists in Ireland. I will have a report on that in the coming weeks. I fully agree there is a lot more pharmacists can do and much more value they can add. We are actively pursuing various measures to that effect.

From previous replies, I think the Minister indicated a working group in place during Covid had been repurposed to look at taking advantage of low-hanging fruit in a highly-qualified segment of the population that has community confidence. The HSE is approaching this by looking at one column after another, which is going to be very slow and it will be difficult to make progress. Can the Minister not see his way to broadening the scope of the work a pharmacist can take on so it is much wider than a case-by-case basis?

I thank the Deputy. I suggest that is exactly what we are doing. We have met the IPU and spoken to pharmacists around the country. I tasked the Department with putting together a package of enhanced practice for pharmacists. That includes minor ailments, flu, access to contraception, medicine shortage protocols to enable pharmacists to substitute medications, and so forth. We have a group that is looking at medicines one by one to say which of them would be appropriate for a pharmacist to be able to provide. We are looking around the world, including at the UK. There are training modules being developed at the moment by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, RCSI, for pharmacy prescribing. When they are in place we will want them for undergraduate and graduate training. We will also want them made available for continuous professional development opportunities for pharmacists. I agree with the Deputy's framing but I suggest we are doing exactly that, insofar as we are trying to go quite broad on this and do several of these things at the same time.

Can the Minister give me a timeline for when we might see a significant package rather than the drip, drip, drip of individual arenas?

No. We are progressing things this year but I cannot yet tell the Deputy when these things will happen, to the month. I am determined we move quickly on this. There is a lot of advantage to be had here, especially with GPs under so much pressure. I cannot give the Deputy an exact timeline because there are clinical governance issues that need to be worked through. There are training modules that have to be gone through as well. I am eager to have it in place as quickly as possible and some of it in place this year, but we have to get the clinical governance and the regulatory side of it right as well. Some of the changes we are proposing are things that have been talked about for many years but have not happened. One of the reasons they have not is because of the clinical governance, oversight and regulatory framework that has to be in place. There is a certain amount of complexity to it. The changes will happen as quickly as possible.

I am going to go back to Deputy Alan Farrell, but I ask Members for their co-operation generally. People are running in, in fairness to them, to take questions. I am just making a general point.