One of my earliest memories of attending an IPU regional meeting in the Metropole Hotel in Cork, was where I was amazed by the oratorical skills of Aidan O’Shea, a past President of the IPU. I remember somebody whispering to me, at the time, that Aidan was in amateur theatre, “don’t you know”, in a lilting Cork accent. These were the times where large meetings were at their zenith. It was not unusual to have well over 100 pharmacists packed into a room on a wet, windy Tuesday night — in the middle of winter. It was also the time where the owner-manager was still the norm. All the characters were there, the one from West Cork, who could elicit a collective groan by merely standing up — she could carve granite with the toughness of her tongue. There was the eminently sensible one, issuing Confucian style wisdom. Ever pervasive was the sheer collegiality, friendliness, practicality and willingness to recognise that we were part of a shared landscape. I found myself running for local office as part of the Cork-Kerry pharmacists’ group, which soon evolved into the southern region of the IPU. It wasn’t long before I found myself on both the national executive and CPC.

In those days, my typical modus operandi was to drive to Mallow, hop on the train and meet my Cork brethren, travelling onwards to Butterfield House. The journey was full of great conversation and wit, with the Cork legends like Diarmuid O’Donovan. It was in Dublin, on the various committees, that I found that one of my major interests, computing could be fostered. The IPU Product File, a critical part of the infrastructure of the IPU, was under the very capable hands of Teresa Rodgers and Michael Doherty. At that time the price list was still printed in full and sent out to each pharmacy, but there was also an electronic version that arrived on a floppy disc. At this stage the Union’s IT Committee, under the able chairmanship of the late Paddy Geoghegan, had secured a standard computerised ordering protocol that worked with all the main wholesalers. One of the key functions of the IPU was to push back against the vast commercial and other interests that were threatening, or otherwise adversely affecting, the wellbeing of pharmacy and its members. These came from many, often unexpected, angles.

In the early 90s, I started to write a regular computing column in the IPU Review. Most pharmacists treated the dispensary computer as a black box, plus ca change. They knew they typed in, they got out a label, a claim and they sometimes got paid. What more would you want? Concept of a backup was a lesson hard earned by many. Frequently it was only when the hard disk crashed that they realised that many years of records were irretrievably gone down the Swanee. I became the equivalent of the Union IT agony aunt. My post box was full of letters seeking advice. It wasn’t clear that the vendors of the pharmacy IT systems were overly enthusiastic about the advice given at the time. By the early noughties the complexion of Irish pharmacy was changing. Chains were hardening their advance and the IPU had to accommodate to this new reality. Always with an eye to a key tenet, a profession working together was always key to the optimal outcome. With the advent of the new PSI the landscape changed even further. Then we lost the Chief Pharmacist from the Department of Health. These seminal events have massively contributed to where we are today.

The union is a critical infrastructure for every Irish community pharmacy. Like the typical iceberg, the vast majority of its work is unseen. Fundamentally, the core of what it does is based on people. People, freely giving of their own time on committees, serving as officers, supported by the extremely professional people in Butterfield house. The IPU, for fifty years, has been about people helping people. What more could we ask?