The law is out of synch with the reality on the ground when it comes to crimes against retailers, writes Fintan Moore
A sad reality for just about every kind of retailer in Ireland is that becoming a victim of crime is a fact of life. There may be some businesses in the quieter rural areas who are off the beaten track enough to survive unscathed but even that is probably unlikely. For most retailers the only questions are how often crime happens, and how bad is it when it does? Low-level shoplifting may not cost large amounts of money but is corrosive on staff morale, and when confronted the thieves can be unpleasant, intimidating or even violent. Fully fledged raids to steal cash, or in the case of pharmacies, cash and drugs, can be hugely upsetting for staff members.
There is a perception among retailers that crime in the sector isn’t being combatted seriously enough, either by Gardai or by the justice system. Recently, one retail body, the Convenience Stores and Newsagents Association reported that nearly 100 per cent of their members had experienced crime in the previous year, and they requested a range of measures to improve the situation such as “stronger legal protections for retailers, including defamation law amendments; the introduction of antisocial behaviour orders (ASBOs) and night courts; direct access to local Garda stations, for faster response times; enforced standards for Garda response times; and a streamlined process for the return of stolen goods, to help businesses recover their losses.”
The first of these regarding defamation law is an interesting one because a false accusation of shoplifting can see a business being sued for tens of thousands of euro, even if the item in question is of trivial value. Clearly the law is out of sync with the reality on the ground.
Obviously, pharmacies aren’t newsagents, but our experiences of crime in the pharmacy sector will overlap with theirs, and there are other retail bodies such as RGDATA who have the same concerns. Collectively, the retail trade in this country is a massive employer and tax contributor but doesn’t wield the political clout that it should. This was blatantly clear during the heights of the Covid pandemic when politicians were falling over themselves to praise hospital staff (and rightly so), but scarcely mentioning the retail workers in Dunnes, Tesco, Centra etc who kept the country functioning. If those, mostly female, checkout operators and floor staff hadn’t kept turning up then society would have crashed to a halt. Similarly, pharmacy staff were the unsung heroes and heroines of the health sector. So, it’s about time that all the retailer organisations made a shopping list of our demands and handed it to the politicians. It’s too late for this general election, but the next one might be sooner than we expect.
Longing for approval
There are lots of petty irritants in the world of community pharmacy, and to quote Marianne Faithful, “what can’t be cured must be endured”. The list is pretty much endless but constantly evolving – for instance the timesucking requirement to enter contraception claims manually has been eliminated by it now being an electronic scheme, but some form of free menopause medication initiative is currently slouching towards a Bethlehem to be born. But of all the petty bureaucratic crosses we have to bear, the existence of ridiculously short approval periods is high on the list of the most-annoying.
You have to wonder what exactly the thought process is when a patient in their seventies with dementia gets approved for phased dispensing, but only for two years. Is there an expectation here on the part of the HSE that the person will grow out of it? Sure, miracles sometimes happen but it’s not a solid basis for policy. As another example we have a patient with severe disabilities who needs a non-firstline Oral Nutritional Supplement so the GP has to reapply for approval every six months. This is hardly an intelligent use of either GP time or HSE staff resources. The same phenomenon occurs with Hardship Scheme approvals for Melatonin. I tend to avoid Hardship like the plague, but get cornered into it every so often, and this bad scheme is made even worse by six-month approvals, necessitating the woefully over-worked staff in Child Psychiatric services to fill out forms to renew approval. There are some necessary evils in the system but these are pointless obstacles that could be removed overnight.
There are some necessary evils in the system but these are pointless obstacles that could be removed overnight
Stock Shock
Not all of the bugbears in my life are the fault of the HSE. Being at the pointy end of the creaking and dysfunctional global supply chain also creates more than its fair share of problems. The amount of pharmacist time getting wasted on trying to source medication, manage changes based on shortages of specific generics, or to find alternatives for out-of-stock medication is frankly insane. Some GP’s are helpfully prompt at replying to healthmails about unavailable lines but it’s frustrating for both us and the patient when they delay. The constant need to switch generics is time-consuming for us, but also potentially confusing and dangerous for the patient. Even when some stock items are showing as available in wholesalers we often can’t order any due to an inadequate allocation. The erratic availability and variable pricing of ULM’s is another mess that we have to wade through. All of this effort distracts attention from looking after patients, and there’s no sign that things are going to improve any time soon.
Fintan Moore graduated as a pharmacist in 1990 from TCD and currently runs a pharmacy in Clondalkin. His email address is: greenparkpharmacy @gmail.com.
