To ask the Minister of Health whether the £5.3m support package for community pharmacies, to help meet the rising costs of medicines, will cover all the price increases.

Community pharmacy representatives have highlighted inflationary pressures in relation to the cost of medicines. In the last number of months there has been a marked increase in the market prices of a small number of medicines versus the reference Drug Tariff price. Where this is identified, community pharmacies are reimbursed at the higher price and this is known as a concessionary price.

While relatively small in number, the cost of concessionary prices has risen each month and at September was £1.7m.

This additional cost is fully reimbursed. However, as community pharmacies are having to manage the risk in advance of concessionary prices being awarded, my Department has increased the amount of concessionary price advance by £0.5m to £1.5m and will keep this under review.

Furthermore, my Department had provided a special advance payment of £35m to community pharmacies at the beginning of the COVID-19 emergency. This has been reclaimed on a gradual basis be retracting £1.4m each month. Given the cashflow issues being reported, my Department has suspended this retraction for a period of three months.

Finally, my Department is processing additional funding of £0.6m to community pharmacy from existing programme funds. It is anticipated these measure will alleviate the issues being faced and my Department will keep this issue under review.