A company which owns pharmacies yesterday brought High Court proceedings challenging 1996 ministerial regulations that seek to impose a new agreement on the pharmacies.
Mr Gerard Hogan SC, for Collooney Pharmacy Ltd, Co Sligo, and Holly Hill Pharmacy Ltd, Holly Hill shopping centre, Cork, both owned by the McSweeney Group Ltd, said the dispute concerned what was commonly described as a community pharmacy contract. The proceedings, which are brought by way of judicial review, are against the North Western and Southern Health Boards.
Mr Hogan said community contracts were, without exception, essential to the viability of every pharmacy. Without them, members of the public were apt to think that they were not proper functioning pharmacies.
Among the main features which the pharmacies were obliged to accept and to which they now objected to was a provision that all supervisory pharmacists have a minimum of three years' experience.
Mr Patrick Durkin, a director of the Holly Hill Pharmacy, said in an affidavit that the pharmacy had been the holder of a community pharmacy contract with the health board since 1995.
Pharmacy services were provided for eligible persons under arrangements made by health boards under Section 59 of the 1970 Health Act. But there had been no regulations made under that section until May 1996, and the McSweeney Group was challenging their validity.
In August 1996, the Southern Health Board wrote seeking to impose on the Holly Hill Pharmacy a new community contract agreement. One of the objections to the new agreement was a clause which would mean the agreement would automatically terminate if a pharmacy's supervising pharmacist ceased to practice or to keep open the pharmacy. Another objection was a clause which provided that an agreement would remain in force for only one month following the death of a pharmacist.
The hearing before Mr Justice Ó Caoimh continues.