{"id":188835,"date":"2025-12-13T00:27:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T00:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/188835\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T00:27:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T00:27:06","slug":"new-blister-pack-rules-delayed-until-later-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/188835\/","title":{"rendered":"New &#8216;blister pack&#8217; rules delayed until later in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A decision by the Government to withdraw funding from January for so-called medication blister packs issued by pharmacies has been delayed following political backlash.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/politics\/2025\/1211\/1548430-leaders-dail\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> the D\u00e1il heard that people, particularly the elderly and those with dementia, were worried that they would have to pay between \u20ac20 to \u20ac50 a month for the blister pack, which had up until now been issued free of charge.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The packs keep daily dosage of tablets in separate plastic pockets which allows patients avoid confusion around what to take and when.<\/p>\n<p>However, in a statement this afternoon, the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) said after &#8220;extensively engaging with the Department of Health and HSE&#8221;, it was agreed to pause the introduction of charges until a later date in the first quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The IPU said it was important to clarify that the supply of blister packs was not reimbursed by the State and has been a private service with proportionate fees set by individual pharmacies.<\/p>\n<p>Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said she welcomed the outcome of the engagement, and said the IPU will have more time to engage with patients in a &#8220;structured and individualised way over the next three months&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A decision by the Government to withdraw funding from January for so-called medication blister packs issued by pharmacies&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-188835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}