The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7229 p880
21/28 December 2002

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Pharmacy owner challenges three-year rule in Irish Supreme Court

An Irish pharmacy owner is challenging in the Irish Supreme Court a European rule that prohibits newly qualified overseas pharmacists from running domestic pharmacies for three years.

"If it wasn't for the generosity of our neighbouring island, Britain, we'd have a major staff crisis in Irish pharmacy," said pharmacy chain owner Sam McCauley. "We have so few pharmacy college places here that huge numbers have to go to the United Kingdom to gain qualifications. But when they come back home after graduation they're not allowed to run a pharmacy. It's not just unfair, it's ridiculous."

Mr McCauley, who has a 10-outlet chain across the Irish Republic, has been campaigning to end the three-year rule.

Earlier this year, when the Irish Pharmaceutical Society threatened to prosecute him for promoting two UK graduates — one Irish, the other Scots — to run two of his shops in Cork, he challenged the three-year rule in the Irish High Court. He lost and was left with a legal bill of around €100,000. Now he is risking an even larger one by appealing to the Supreme Court.

"It's a matter of principle," he says. "The rule makes absolutely no sense when there is a chronic shortage of pharmacists in this country. At present, we have just one pharmacy school, at Dublin's Trinity College. That had been producing just 50 graduates a year, though the figure has now gone up to 70. New pharmacy colleges are planned in Dublin and Cork, but they won't be turning out graduates for at least five years."

Mr McCauley estimates that a third of the 3,000 pharmacists on the Irish register have been educated outside the country. "We couldn't offer them college places, but we now tell them they can't run a pharmacy. How can that be right?" he asks.

He believes the rule, which was intended to protect existing pharmacies from an influx of overseas competitors, is an anachronism, at a time when the Irish market is being deregulated.

He is confident about the Supreme Court appeal, which will be heard early in the new year, and takes comfort from the fact that the Irish Pharmaceutical Society was not awarded costs in the High Court action.