It is expected that all pharmacy vendors will have their full CCS solutions in place to support the 150 data champions with their data collection exercise in July 2026. Data collection will continue over the coming months. The data champion pharmacies will also be supporting with operational insights into service delivery.
The Department of Health national survey for members of the public is still live. You are encouraged to continue to highlight it to patients.
Invitations continue to be issued to pharmacies on a phase basis. The invitation supports pharmacies to order free condoms and lubricants from the NCDS. These can then be provided free of charge as part of consultations such as emergency contraception. The aim of the service is to further support such patients in engaging with safe sexual health practices.
We encourage pharmacists and their teams to engage with this initiative. It is intended to be a supportive tool to help enhance the consultations you are already having about sexual health on an ongoing basis. Further information and support materials are available on the NCDS Hub on the IPU website.
Men’s Health Week ran from 15 to 22 of June with pharmacies nationwide supporting the initiative. The theme, ‘One Step at a Time’, and associated educational materials are ones that can be used to support conversations with men attending the pharmacy well after the campaign itself has ended.
The suite of resources are available on the Health Promotion Hub on the IPU website. Hard copy resources on this, and other topics related to men’s health, can be ordered from healthpromotion.ie.
To support evaluation of the campaign and ongoing delivery in practice, pharmacies will be required to complete a brief end-of-campaign survey. Further detail will be communicated in July.
Future health promotion activity in 2026 will focus on the BowelScreen programme and the Winter Vaccination programme.
The pharmacy pneumococcal vaccination service (providing PPV 23 vaccination to healthy over-65-year-olds who are eligible) is now operational. Please note that ‘healthy’ in this context means persons over 65 who do not have a condition that puts them at higher risk of Invasive Pneumococcal Disease (IPD). These conditions are outlined in Table 16.1 of ‘Chapter 16’ of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) Immunisation Guidelines for Ireland.
Resources to support delivery in practice are available on the Pneumococcal Vaccination Hub on ipu.ie.
The roll out of the Unused Medicines Return and Disposal Service will commence in July. The service, which will be known as Mediback, will allow for the the collection and disposal of unused medicines returned by the public through Community Pharmacies.
Enabling patients to return their unused medicines to their local community pharmacy restricts access to unused medicines, thereby reducing the risk of suicide, self-harm and accidental poisoning in children. Ireland’s Connecting for Life: Ireland’s National Strategy to Reduce Suicide 2015-2024 and the National Drug Strategy: Reducing Harm and Supporting Recovery 2017-2025 highlight this need to reduce the availability of medicines which can be used for these purposes. Correctly disposing of antimicrobials (for example antibiotics) is also a simple but vital way to protect public health, as incorrect disposal can allow these medicines to enter the environment and contribute to antimicrobial resistance. Returning unused or expired medicines to pharmacies helps reduce this risk, protects our environment, and keeps these life‑saving medicines effective when needed.
An article in this edition of the IPU Review provides an overview of the service. HSE Circular NCO-25-2026 has also been issued. It contains information on:
Deliveries of bins will commence from 8 July and will take several weeks. Communication to the public will only commence once all pharmacies have received their bins.
The Unused Medicines Return and Disposal Hub on the IPU website provides information and resources to support delivery in practice.
The Health (Provision of Contraception Prescribing Service in Retail Pharmacy Businesses) Bill 2026 has been published to the Oireachtas website. The objectives of the Bill are to:
The Bill is currently before Dáil Éireann, First stage.
As outlined in CPA25 community pharmacists and their teams have an important role to play in supporting increased uptake of the BowelScreen programme. Bowel Cancer is the second most common newly diagnosed cancer in men and the third most common in women. 2,600 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer in Ireland every year. Studies have shown that bowel cancer screening from the age of 50 upwards can reduce the number of people dying from bowel cancer.
In July pharmacy teams will be invited to engage in the BowelScreen community pharmacy intervention by the HSE. Community pharmacy contractors who provide notice of participation to the HSE will be supported with an annual allowance of €500 to recognise the health promotion activity they will engage in during Phase 1 of the activation. Phase 2 funding to be supported by way of a per patient service fee for patient registration on the programme.
The IPU have been working closely with the HSE National Screening Service on the plans for Phase 1 activity. In July a suite of educational modules will be made available to community pharmacists and their teams. These modules will provide pharmacy teams with knowledge related to:
Further health promotion activity is planned for later this year (Q4). The education materials are being made available in July to support teams to complete them in advance of the Q4 activity.
The new GMS Medicines Optimisation Support Service was implemented on 1 June. The new agreement replaces the previous phased dispensing model, in place prior to CPA 2025, with a GMS Medicines Optimisation Support Service, with an increased focus on medicines optimisation support for patients. Under this model, pharmacists will determine the most appropriate optimisation supports, where clinically indicated, for certain cohorts of medical card patients.
A dedicated hub on the IPU website contains a range of resources to support with understanding and implementing the service. The addendum to CPA25 to replace section 3.4.3, a recorded IPU Members Information webinar, FAQs and clinical support tools are all available on this Medicines Optimisation hub. An article in this edition of the IPU Review provides further information.
Section 4.3 of CPA25 includes commitments to modernise prescription management and reduce unnecessary administrative burden, while maintaining regulatory safeguards.
Legislative amendments have been introduced to enable pharmacies to move to electronic record keeping. This is one of the most significant administrative reforms for community pharmacy in many years. Whilst the legal basis for moving to electronic record keeping is in place from 30 June 2026, the move itself is a significant change. The IPU will be supporting with the change management required to safely and effectively implement the new work processes over the coming months. Full adoption will take time, and we are here to support you, whatever stage of the journey you and your teams are at.
Two articles in this edition of the Review -Electronic Record Keeping: Preparing for the transition to digital pharmacy workflows and Our Medicines Optimisation feature on conducting a risk assessment of proposed practice provide further food for thought.
Clare Fitzell
Secretary General, IPU
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