Following the launch in February of the Common Conditions Service, the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, has been highlighting its positive potential.
Responding to a question from Martin Daly (Fianna Fáil, Roscommon-Galway) she said, “Let me say loudly again that you do not need to go to your GP for eight conditions, including a simple eye infection, thrush or a urinary tract infection. You can go directly to your pharmacy and pay €30 for a consultation with a pharmacist, a diagnosis and a prescription.”
She said that this “matters because it creates more space in GP practices for somebody who needs a prescription . . . Because we have changed the pathway, people can get quicker diagnosis and an appropriate prescription to clear up a basic but important and potentially risky infection.”Elsewhere the service was raised in the Dáil during the Social Democrats’ Motion on Expanding Access to General Practitioner Care. Included in the Motion, as introduced by Deputy Pádraig Rice (Cork South Central), the party is calling for the Government to remove the CCS fee for medical card holders.
In responding, the two Ministers of State at the Department of Health, Jennifer Murnane O’Connor, Minister of State for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy, and Kieran O’Donnell, Minister of State for Older People, pointed to the CCS as one of the measures the Department of Health is introducing to improve access to healthcare. Minister Murnane O’Connor also clarified that, “the CCS is a private service rather than a State-funded service” and so is subject to a consultation fee determined by the individual pharmacist.
Criticism from opposition TDs and the public in relation to blister packing continues to be raised in the Dáil. Deputy Ken O’Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland) asked the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, whether she “accepts that requiring patients with a disability to privately fund essential medication compliance supports may undermine safe administration of prescribed medicines in home-care settings”. He further asked the Minister when her Department will conclude its examination of the use of monitored dosage systems.
The Minister advised that her Department, the HSE, the PSI and the IPU are in ongoing engagement on the use of monitored dosage systems and that she had no update for the Deputy at that time. On the Deputy’s other questions, the Minister advised that “there has been no removal of that service by the State — it has always been a privately funded service.”
Deputy Ken O’Flynn returned to ask further questions of the Minister on monitored dosage, asking her, “whether her Department or the HSE has carried out any clinical risk assessment of patients with disabilities, cognitive impairment, or home-care dependency who rely on pharmacist-prepared monitored dosage systems to safely self-administer prescribed medicines”. The Minister advised that, as blister packing is a private service, “to date there has been no clinical or impact risk assessment conducted in respect of any patient population”.
Deputy John Connolly (Galway West, Fianna Fáil) asked the Minister for Health what her Department was doing to “tackle the issue of over-prescribing”, raising the medicine optimisation programmes.
The Minister set out the annual funding allowance that has been set under the Community Pharmacy Agreement 2025 to support medicine optimisation programmes. In her response, the Minister also advised that Ireland has, “high and rising levels of polypharmacy”, which can result in preventable hospital admissions with adverse drug reactions. She defines medicines optimisation as “a person-centric approach to safe and effective medicine use”, which will ensure that people obtain the best outcomes from their medicines.
She outlined that the new annual funding aims to “test, refine and scale-up new approaches with community pharmacy in a structured and evidence-based manner”.
In a Parliamentary Question, Deputy Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Féin) raised the price of Mounjaro with the Minister, asking her what “steps her Department is taking to ensure that the price of mounjaro is consistent across all outlets”. He also asked the Minister what work she is doing to ensure that cost is not a barrier to those patients for whom it is a necessity.
The Minister advised that she has “no powers over the commercial decision-making of how individual pharmacies price medicines to private customers”. She added that pharmacies operate in a competitive pharmacy market and it would not be the place of the Minister to interfere.
The Minister for Health has confirmed in the Dáil that plans are underway to allow for pharmacy-based prescribing of oral contraception. Responding to a query from Pádraig Rice about sexual health she said, the “Community Pharmacy Agreement, launched in 2025, supports expanding pharmacy services, delivering safe, efficient and accessible healthcare, across Ireland . . . The Agreement supports pharmacy prescription of contraception, under defined clinical circumstances, for which some legislation, the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 2024 (the 2024 Act), is already in place.”
Brian Harrison
Managing Director, MKC Communications
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