Hayfever eyedrops & other meds - is north the cheapest

Anti-Histimine tablets are £1.50 in Asda.

Iboprofin and paracetamol are about 40p for 16packs in the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury's or Asda. You can are limited to buying a pack of each per transaction.

One thing to watch out for is the basic tablet version are cheapest, buying the capsule version can be double or triple that price.

If they have a store near where you are headed check out Savers - https://www.savers.co.uk/ can see products and prices online -if nothing else you can use to compare with the prices of a mainstream store such as Boots.

Wherever you go, it will be cheaper than down here though…

Gaviscon is considerable cheaper. There's also a version in a pink bottle that is not available down here. It has a larger concentration one of the active ingredients.

Would anyone know if Chemist Warehouse down here is now competitive on stuff like that? My monthly prescription, was €60+, CW charge €27.

Chemist Warehouse would not be cheaper.

For the likes of paracetemol,ibruprofen,hayfever treatments,Rennies,cough mixtures the supermarkets own brands in the North are a lot cheaper than the Republic.Semi-chem is always worth a look.Occasionally products are on special offer-timing has to be right when visiting - for all shops.Comparing Boots Ireland and Boots UK it's 50/50 in a lot of cases.Neurofen Plus is def cheaper in Boots UK and can be closer to the Irish prices in Northern independent pharmacies-and smaller packs.

Chemist Warehouse Cetrine anti-histamine tablets about 1/2 the price of most other chemists. Same active ingredient as most of the branded ones.

Was in Australia (the home of Chemist Warehouse) and checked out the prices there in CW. Box of 100 paracetamol or 100 ibuprofen about AU$7 or about €5.

Amazon selling Clarityn substitute for £10.50 inc delivery for 6 months worth.

They are due for delivery this week. I'll update if successful.

That is incorrect.

You can buy OTC medication from EU pharmacies for delivery to Ireland.

The problem is that prices of branded pharma is not much different.

It's what happened, and I have tried to buy aspirin and other OTC medications from several pharmacies in the EU and every one of them said nyet, we can't sell to you. Do you think some pharmacy in the Netherlands or UK is going to have the wherewwithall to keep track of what is and isn't OTC in Stalag 17? A blanket nyet is easier.

And you forgot to mention that Irish pharmacies have the highest profit margins in the EU.

The system here is messed up, I believe deliberately. Beconase has the active ingredient Beclametasone. Beconase has paid some insane amount of money to jump through whatever hoops are necessary to get it approved and registered as OTC, but if you want to buy just generic Beclametasone, you can't buy that OTC, you have to pay €60 to go get a prescription from a doctor and then I believe a pharmacy will likely charge a 'dispensing' fee on top of the the cheaper generic price, making it the same or more expensive than branded 'Beconase', let alone adding the doctors fee. It's the same bloody thing this costly registration sytem is unnecessary. If it wasn't safe you wouldn't be able to get it even on prescription - n'est ce pas?

This scam means Irish people can not avail of the cheaper prices of generics to the same extent as consumers in other countries.

Ireland second-highest OECD health spending, poorest outcomes. The share of generic drugs in the market is low in Ireland in both in volume (29% compared with an OECD average of 48%) and in value (16% compared with an OECD average of 24%).

More recently, there has been much concern over the low rates of generic usage in Ireland. In 2009, 34% of multiple-source off-patent pharmaceuticals dispensed under the main State pharmaceutical reimbursement schemes in Ireland were generics, in comparison with 71% in the UK.

As if this weren't enough protectionism of big and little pharma in this corrupt little sodden isle, some years ago the state banned the importation and sale of a wide range of herbal medicines that were widely available world-wide, like St Johns wort: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/herbal-remedies-risk-removal-from-shelves/26727589.html

The bans went ahead and at the end of that article you will note that the IMB predicted people would turn to the internet - I being one of them - but they had that covered as they had people monitoring and seizing incoming packages containing the banned substances - mine being one of them. The EU directive was never intended to ban these substances, but Irish authorities twisted interpretation and implimentaion used it to that effect. Such was the outcry, even from the medical fraternity, that they relented somewhat, years later, and some became available in Ireland again. But they sure made a good go of banning the lot for a number of years. Nice to see that the blow back was more than they ever anticipated.

seems painkillers are a "controlled" pharmacy product, hence they cannot be sold online. Controlled as in maximum one pack.

However on hayfever medication there ware no controls, so these should be available from EU pharmacies.

I don't see it as a scam, but it is messed up. The main reason for having a separate regulatory regime here was that at the time most people on the island were Caucasian Irish as no-one wanted to move here and tens of thousands wanted to emigrate. A Spanish person can react to certain medications differently to and Irish person, likewise a Nigerian person. Hence country specific packaging, licensing and even formulations for every different pharma product here.

As we have finally developed into a modern, education multi cultural society and we are now well off and people want to live here and not many (in historical terms) want to emigrate. The need to protect the Caucasian indigenous population from the very very very small risk of pan-European medical advice/packaging is probably no longer required and its possibly a quango that could be dispensed with (pun intended).

and 100% agree on herbal remedies. Melatonin & St Johns wort available on supermarket shelves in Germany (and probably most other countries). That is certainly ridiculous.

BTW - I disagree on pharmacy margins. That was the case 10-15 years ago. Certainly in not the case these days.

They arrived today. 1 year supply for £15.50

These ones?

None near me I'm afraid. I checked online before but the postage cost cancelled out any savings. I must have another look.

I decided to try the Donegal crowd.

I added a pack of 24 paracetamol for €1.49 so total order was €4.48

Got 10% discount as new customer.

Postage is €4.95 so I paid €8.98 in total.

Buying the same locally would cost me a minimum of €14 so I've saved a fiver even with the postage cost.

Ordered at 11pm last night and just got an email saying my package is on the way already.

Thanks for the heads up 👍.

If you have a Pure Pharmacy near you, they do the 30 tablet box of Cetrine for €7. Got some this afternoon. Unfortunately, they didn't have Beconase in stock, so had to shell out €15 for it in the local rip off merchant family run chemist.

Only two chemists in my town and they price match on everything.

The Donegal system will work for me for the moment if they don't put up their prices.

Because there's only a 50/50 chance of them arriving, and a 50/50 chance of you getting a letter from the HPRA for illegal importation of medicines instead.

We are a small market, every product needs to be licencsed (expensive process)

Would you have a link to those?

Buying a generic of an OTC requires a prescription, so that exhortation is a nonsense.

This licencing system is an unnecessary rort. We are perfectly happy to let the EU set car safety standards, the UK to provide our air force and navy and overall defence, so we should be just as happy to let far more technically capable countries set the standards for medicines as well. Everything sold in another EU state OTC should be sold her OTC. So generic OTC medicines would become available and cheap as they are sold OTC elsewhere in the EU.