The Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) has criticised the findings of the Pharmacy Review Group and the way the Department of Health published the report.
The IPU described the proposal to allow any company or pharmacist to enter the Irish market and acquire up to 8 per cent of medical card contracts, known as GMS, in any health board area as a "recipe for disaster" .
The organisation argues this proposal this ignores the issue of the future ownership - which it sees as fundamental to the future of the sector.
The review said it found "clear evidence of market failure" in the community pharmacy sector owing to the lack of price competition and policies which restricted the number of pharmacies contacted to dispense drugs to medical card holders. These GMS were revoked by the Department of Health in 2002.
The review group has recommended that the number of contracts that may be held by any one entity in each health board area should be limited to 8 per cent of all contracts to encourage competition.
The IPU's president, Mr Richard Collis, decribed the proposal as a "cop-out" as it ignored the issue of ownership.
He claimed "the main beneficiaries of Ireland's deregulated market include international companies and large retailers who are prevented from buying retail pharmacies in most of the major European markets because of regulation in those countries. The only losers here will be patients and clients of pharmacies."
Mr Collis condemned the Department of Health's low-key publishing of the report, which appeared on the Department's website last Friday afternoon.
He said that nothing more accurately summed-up the mismanagement of this whole issue by the Department than the publication of such an important document in this manner. "The Department received the report over 12 months ago and has failed to make its findings public since then," he said.