The Mount Wolseley Hotel, Carlow will host the 2026 IPU National Pharmacy Conference on Saturday, 9 May. Preparations are progressing quickly, and the venue will provide a welcoming, professional setting for the day. This year’s theme, ‘Reimagining Community Care — The Era of Opportunity’, highlights the expanding role of community pharmacists. The programme brings together leading experts who will share insights, challenge assumptions, and explore opportunities shaping the future of community care.

The agenda features an engaging lineup of individual speakers, panel discussions, and the highly anticipated Great Debate in the afternoon. We are delighted to announce that we are reintroducing our popular CPD sessions, with both business and clinical topics covered. We will also welcome back our MC, Conall O Móráin, to ensure the activities of the day run smoothly. Mr Ó Moráin is a prominent business broadcaster, MC and podcaster.

We are delighted to announce the conference proceedings will commence with an address from the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD. This will be followed by an address from IPU President, Tom Murray. Succeeding this, we are pleased to reintroduce CPD sessions, with both business and clinical options to select from: Pia Fennell, the IPU’s Education and Training Manager, will lead the business session on ‘Managing Challenging Behaviour’ while Helen Danaher, Chief Pharmacist in the HSE, will deliver the clinical session on ‘Metabolic Syndrome in Mental Health’.

After a short tea and coffee break, our keynote speaker, the Department of Health’s Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Mary Horgan, will take to the stage to share her insights. Our Motivational Speaker, Dr Kate Kirby, Head of Performance Psychology from Sport Ireland Institute, will then share her motivation tips before lunch. Her talk on ‘Reaching and Sustaining Peak Performance Levels’ should help instil some positive behaviours that we can all put to daily use in our busy lives.

Attendees will take a well-deserved lunch break after this to mull over Dr Kirby’s insights. The post-lunch coffee and dessert will be served in the exhibition hall where you can engage with our wide variety of exhibitors.

After lunch, two speakers, Larry Ryan, Director, Ipsos B&A, and Noel Winters, Partner at Fitzgerald Power, will deliver an address on ‘Review of the Pharmacy Sector — Public Perceptions and Business Reality’.

This will be followed by two more CPD sessions: the next clinical topic provides us with ‘Perspectives on Isotretinoin — Prescribing in Primary Care’, delivered by GP Diarmuid Quinlan, Medical Director, ICGP and Dr Edel Burton, Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy, UCC. The business CPD covers ‘Improving Pharmacy Processes’ presented by Frank Olden, pharmacist and IPU Pharmacy Practice Working Group member.

After another tea and coffee break, the final session of the day will be the always stimulating ‘Great Debate’ panel discussion, which will feature a panel of leaders from clinical, educational, and regulatory backgrounds, offering diverse viewpoints and encouraging lively discussion on the conference theme ‘Reimagining Community Care — The Era of Opportunity’. We are delighted to welcome Dr Diarmuid Quinlan, Medical Director, ICGP;  Dr Catriona Bradley, Executive Director, IIOP;  Sinead Lanigan, pharmacist and EPC member; and CMO, Prof. Mary Horgan.

The conference will then close, and we will break before the evening’s entertainment begins with pre‑dinner drinks at 7.00pm, followed by the President’s Dinner (black-tie event) and musical entertainment to close off the night.

Finally, there will be plenty of opportunities to network with peers and explore the wide range of companies supporting the pharmacy sector in our Exhibition Hall throughout the day. As always, we would like to thank all our generous sponsors and exhibitors for their continued support, without whom the conference would not be the great success that it has become over the years.

All the conference information and booking options are available here.