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Community Pharmacy Northern Ireland (CPNI) chief executive Gerard Greene has greeted the Government's announcement today of a new contract for GPs by insisting it is “deeply disappointing” ministers have repeatedly failed to answer community pharmacy’s call for “urgent” funding. 

The new general practice contract, agreed between the Department of Health and the British Medical Association’s Northern Ireland general practitioners committee, makes an extra £40 million available over two years.

The total in-year value of the 2026-27 GP contract is worth a further £17.384 million, including £13.3 million of recurrent funding into core GP services.

Greene said investment in primary care was “welcome” but warned the Government that community pharmacy was in need of “urgent funding reform and a new, negotiated contract”. He said the sector’s pleas should not go unanswered.

“Pharmacies are continually being asked to do more, without a contract or the funding needed to deliver these services sustainably,” Greene said.

“Rather than being negotiated, the funding for community pharmacy has once again been imposed in 2026-27, with departmental officials recognising at a recent health committee meeting that this falls short of what the sector says is needed.

“Community pharmacies are open every day as the front door to the health service, providing essential medicines, clinical advice, and care to patients when they need it most.”

Greene insisted CPNI “has consistently raised funding concerns” with ministers for years and insisted “there is an urgent need to stabilise the sector going into the peak winter pressures period”.

He called on the Government to “address the unsustainable funding model” pharmacies are operating to and stop deducting over £20 million in medicine payments to pharmacies each year. That alone, he added, “would stabilise the sector”.

Pharmacists have met to discuss what measures to take 

Greene revealed pharmacists have been meeting in the last week to discuss what measures they may need to take to cushion the impact of “mounting pressures”. He said a final meeting will take place this evening.

 “Let me be clear, community pharmacies will strive to remain open and continue to be there for patients,” he said. “However, we cannot continue to absorb increasing workloads, workforce challenges and financial pressures indefinitely when actual medicine supply is at risk. 

“Concerns have been raised by medicine wholesalers at a health committee session earlier this year regarding pharmacies breaching their wholesaler trading terms, risking the supply of medicines to pharmacies and patients, because pharmacists are simply unable to pay.”

Urging the health minister Robbie Butler to give pharmacy “a sustainable funding model and a new negotiated contract” and warning patients will “begin to feel the consequences of continued inaction”, Greene added: “(That is) something departmental officials and his predecessors have failed to do over 15 years."