I have been holding back from posting anything for the last week or so. It is not that there has been nothing happening but that it was in such a state of flux that anything I may have posted could be out of date by the time that it was posted.
Having considered the new terms for the GMS contract i have decided that it does not make any economic sense for me. So yesterday I posted off my resignation to Prof Dumm Dumm giving him the 30 days notice as required under FEMPI. So from 1st August I will not be part of SWMBO Harney’s evil empire.
Normally I am not one to follow the herd. But it seems that the herd agrees with me. As of lunch time today 350 of my colleagues have confirmed that they are also resigning their contracts. And the number is likely to pass 600 by tonight. It is not as if we all conspired to do this but if it starts raining everybody puts up their umbrella.
It’s a big step for me. I have spent the last 6 years building up the pharmacy and driving the business forward. But I am not prepared to sit here and let Harney bleed me dry. Is it that much to ask that the Dept. of Health actually sit down with pharmacists and discuss this. We have been available for talks for the last 3 years, we have put forward proposals for a new contract that would save just as much as these savage cuts but all that Harney and Drumm do is to pull on the lederhosen, jackboots and swastika armbands and goosestep over one of the few parts of our health service that was functioning properly. Even in Germany Celesio and Boots are not allowed to own pharmacies but here in Ireland Harney wants to hand it all to them on a plate. It is ironic that we have one section of government trying to save small Irish owned business and another doing their best to destroy them.
Edmund Burke wrote that for evil men to prosper all it takes is for good men to do nothing. Well the good men (and ladies) of pharmacy are making a stand. It still may be the end of community pharmacy in Ireland but at least we will go down fighting. I would rather be dammed for something I did than for doing nothing.