Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has described plans to allow pharmacists to prescribe some medicines as “a significant move”.
Speaking to Newstalk's Pat Kenny show, Mr Donnelly said such schemes already exist in other countries, adding that nurses have been prescribing in Ireland for many years.
"We'll have very significant additional training, specialist training, a regulatory framework in place. We're working very closely with the regulator on this and a task force that we put together is a very serious group of people. So we have experts in medicine, experts in pharmacology, experts in medicine safety.
"We have the GP represented throughout their professional body, the Irish College of General Practitioners. We have the pharmacy regulator on board.
"So we're going to do this in line with additional regulation, additional training, additional oversight. And we have to remember that pharmacists, like doctors or like nurses, they are highly trained clinical professionals and are trusted."
Asked about the possibility of patients going from pharmacist to pharmacist to get extra medications, Mr Donnelly said there will be a direct link from patients to their GP through the pharmacy, so any prescriptions would be flagged on the system and would be examined.
Such situations were exactly what the expert group will examine and "come back and flag with me," Mr Donnelly explained.
He said another area that would be examined is advanced prescribing: "This would only be done with the pharmacist as part of a multidisciplinary team. We've talked about the minor ailments, we've talked about repeat prescriptions, we've talked about substituting medicines.
"There are three. The fourth is where there is more advanced care as part of a multidisciplinary team, but the pharmacist could also prescribe, again with a significant additional specialist training, regulation, governance and oversight."
Drug shortages
On the issue of drugs shortages, Mr Donnelly said he would not accept the reason for shortages was that manufacturers and wholesalers were not being paid enough to “make it worth their while” to import some drugs
“I wouldn't accept that, but I think what we have is, unfortunately the agency, the HPRA that lists the medicines shortages does not also list the substitutes that are available. I've asked for this to be done several times. I want to see it happen because what happens is that HPRA has a long list and it says these are the medicines that are in short supply and that gets reported.
“And what doesn't get reported is the bit that the HPRA has yet to say, which is, by the way, there are substitutes and there are different volumes of different applications available. Ireland does well in terms of medicines.
"Now we are dealing with issues in terms of Brexit. We have recently lost the ability to package the medicines for both the UK and the Irish market. We are now the only English speaking country in the EU, and so that is presenting some difficulties, but we are dealing with that.”
Asked about emergency department and trolley numbers, Mr Donnelly said the move to seven-day roster had worked very well when implemented over holiday weekends.
Nurses were already rostered seven days a week, he said, but community services tended to be operated on five day rosters. Hospitals could not do this on their own, so negotiations would be required, he added.
National Children's Hospital
Mr Donnelly also spoke about his deep frustration with the ongoing delays at the National Children’s Hospital.
"I'm deeply frustrated with the amount of claims that the contractor is putting in place. The board is working night and day.
"I met the chair of the board last week. I met the management team of the board the previous week. A lot of things are similar to 2019. A lot of the issues we've discussed are similar.
"However, three things are different. One is Covid and Covid did impact on the time because the construction activity was paused for a fair amount of time. The second is the war in Ukraine has very significantly increased building costs. And that is nobody's fault in Ireland, it's not the contractors fault. That is something that has to be dealt with.
"The third thing that has changed is that we have resourced the boards to dispute these claims. So as you would be aware that the contractor has submitted claims to the tune of around €760 million."
Mr Donnelly said that the board of the hospital was working "very hard on two fronts to minimise the exposure to the state financially into the claims being put in by the contractor to get this hospital open for children as quickly as possible".
Mr Donnelly admitted that the opening date of the hospital could go into 2025.
"We need the hospital open because it is going to be a game changer. And essentially we're now focused on the last 10 percent.
"The hospital is 89 per cent, 90 per cent complete, there's 10 per cent left. Then it needs to be handed over to Children's Health Ireland, and they need to finish the commissioning, and we need to get that. We need to get the hospital."
