Member's statement: Community Pharmacy
Member's statement by Mr Peter Martin on .
- MLA
- Mr Peter Martin
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 1 October 2024
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Community Pharmacy
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4562210
Read the official Assembly record
Text
This morning, I want to highlight community pharmacies in Northern Ireland, their core importance for primary care and some of the challenges that they face. For transparency purposes, I should declare that my wife, Melanie, is a pharmacist. However, these issues were raised by Community Pharmacy NI at a meeting that I recently held with it. Our local pharmacies are a vital service at the heart of our communities. They are where we go for medicines, advice, vaccinations and a variety of additional services that they now provide through Pharmacy First. If we were to quantify the output of that service, we would find that it procured, financed, stored and dispensed half a billion pounds' worth of medicines in 2023-24 and provided more than 190,000 emergency supply items in the same period. That is a phenomenal achievement. We know that our health service is under considerable pressure, with growing waiting lists and sometimes frustrating repeated attempts to access appointments with GPs. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that pharmacies have become critical in alleviating some of the current burden on our healthcare system. The fact that professional advice and support can be accessed in community pharmacies, with no appointment needed, is a very rare commodity in our health service these days. However, I have to point out that some of our local pharmacies are struggling. There have been 17 permanent local pharmacy closures since January 2023, and the health trusts did not intervene to ensure that those pharmacies remained viable. One of the key challenges that pharmacies face is how they are funded. The fees and payments that they receive often do not fully cover their business costs and overheads, such as wages, insurance, rates and rent. At times, there is a disparity between the actual cost of drugs that the pharmacy dispenses and the drug tariff that regulates the reimbursement price. That has the effect of the pharmacy having to wait to see whether a temporary drug tariff increase will be applied that month and whether it will cover the cost of the drugs that were dispensed. The Department of Health needs to recognise and value the importance of our community pharmacies. They are, effectively, the front line of primary care in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I urge the Health Minister to, first, provide relatively modest investment to stabilise the sector and, secondly, to provide the platform for development to enable our pharmacies to do more.
408 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.95).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.02 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.95 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.02 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.91 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.07 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.02 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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