John Connolly
Question:296. Deputy John Connolly asked the Minister for Health the steps her Department is taking to tackle the issue of over-prescribing; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13236/26]
View answerWednesday, 18 February 2026
Questions (296)
Written answers
Under the Community Pharmacy Agreement (October 2025), an annual funding allowance of €4,500,00, has been agreed, to support medicine optimisation programmes delivered through community pharmacy. This yearly budgetary allocation is ring fenced for community pharmacy delivered optimisation programmes and any unallocated funding will be reinvested across the sector on an annual basis.
Ireland has high and rising levels of polypharmacy which impacts health, safety and quality of life and results in preventable hospital admissions with adverse drug reactions. Medicines optimisation is defined as 'a person-centred’ approach to safe and effective medicines use, to ensure people obtain the best possible outcomes from their medicines. It involves improving prescription efficiency, shared decision making, effective administration and monitoring to achieve desired health benefits while minimising risks and waste. Optimising a person's medicines is important to support the management of long-term conditions, multimorbidity, high-risk medicines and polypharmacy.
There is good evidence that community pharmacy-based schemes to support people with new, high risk or discharge medicines, and to support people to understand and use their medicines appropriately, improves adherences and delivers benefits. The dedicated Agreement fund allocated to progressing opportunities to improve or expand community pharmacy services in relation to medicines optimisation could consider:
• Diagnostic Testing to guide rational and appropriate prescribing.
• A New Medicines Service to help patients who have been newly prescribed medication for a long-term condition to understand how to use their medicines effectively and safely.
• A Discharge Medicines Review Service to ensure safe and effective use of medicines during the critical transition from secondary to primary care.
• Structured Medication Reviews to identify and resolve medication-related problems, improve adherence, and ensure that each medicine is clinically appropriate, safe, and aligned with the patient’s health goals.
The fund will be designed to test, refine, and scale up new approaches within community pharmacy in a structured and evidence-based manner, while creating a framework for ongoing collaboration between my Department, the HSE, the IPU, and other stakeholders, who are all involved in the delivery of safe medicines care to patients. Additionally, I am pleased that the HSE has included a Key Performance Indicator in relation to polypharmacy in the 2026 National Service Plan. An approach to improve identified issues is to be designed in 2026 for implementation in 2027.