HEALTH MINISTER JENNIFER Carroll MacNeill said she has met with the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) in an attempt to resolve the delay in rolling out a national plan to make Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) free to all women.

As part of Budget 2025, outgoing health minister Stephen Donnelly announced that €20 million was being made available from January for the provision of state-funded HRT products.

The medicine-based treatment, which is used to relieve symptoms of menopause and perimenopause, is free for holders of medical cards, but otherwise can cost in the region of €30 to €70 a month.

Under the new scheme, the products would be free of charge, but the Department confirmed that women who have a prescription from their doctor would still have to pay for their GP visit and dispensing fee to the pharmacist. 

However, there has been a delay in rolling out the measure nationwide. Women are continuing to pay for HRT products, with the IPU previously saying there had been a lack of communication from the Department about how the scheme would be implemented.

Speaking in Dún Laoghaire today, Carroll MacNeill said there was a perception it would be “free entirely” and that the Government would cover the dispensing fee, but this is not the case.

She said women are paying around €60 for HRT, of which €40 is the cost of the medication and around €20 is the fee that pharmacists charge for dispensing, but it varies among different pharmacies.

“What Stephen Donnelly did in the budget last year was secure €20 million to pay for the product. That would have paid for the €40, but not to cover the dispensing fee.

“In that instance, and that was to be implemented since 1 January 1, so (women) should have been paying €20 since the beginning of January.

“What’s going on is that there was a lack of the … Stephen Donnelly was very clear that the money was for the medication – and I’ve gone back and I’ve checked the statements and checked the press statements, and it was for the medication.

‘Body of work to do’

“I think more broadly there was a perception that it was free entirely, that it was going to cover the dispensing fee, and the way that he did it, it was a new way of doing it.

“It was an effort to begin to do something, but there wasn’t agreement with the pharmacist that they would dispense it, and so it wasn’t implemented, even though it has been available to be implemented since the beginning of January.”

Carroll MacNeill said she met with the Irish Pharmacy Union on 11 February and had “a good discussion” with them about the rollout of the scheme. 

“They have broader priorities generally, around reversing some of spending cuts, increasing fees generally. There’s a body of work to do that and I absolutely recognise that.”

The Fine Gael minister said she wants to see pharmacies doing a “great deal more” and expanding their role in healthcare, including prescribing for common conditions.

“I think there’s quite a huge opportunity to do that. But this has been an unusual engagement, because it’s something new that the state hasn’t done that before, where they’ve paid for the medication, but not the dispensing fee,” she said. 

Most women have said to me that they would be happy to pay the dispensing fee.

“I recognise that pharmacists have an expertise and that they bring that expertise to advising women, to managing the medication, and so what I’m trying to do is find a space in the middle where I can do something that recognises pharmacists’ work, and also maintain my budget discipline within the Department of Health.”

She also said there should be more transparency around the breakdown of the costs, including dispensing fees charged by pharmacists.

With reporting from Press Association