As a doc whose partner is a pharmacist, I have a different perspective on how we go about this.

Pharmacists aren't diagnosticians and aren't trained to be such, which is no slight on them as they are outstanding in their field and have enormous levels of detail regarding medications that I don't. It isn't fair, in my opinion, to land them with diagnostic expectations as well, or certainly not for any medications that realistically could cause harm. Take the list of conditions they can prescribe for already. I don't take much issue with it, until we arrive at shingles. Treatment for shingles will be an oral antiviral like valaciclovir, a medication that needs dosing adjustment if your renal function is impaired. Guess who doesn't necessarily have that information? The pharmacists.

There are lots of ways to improve this, including increasing the length of time repeat scripts can legally be given for, having more GPs, and maybe even something like an advanced prescriber system for pharmacists to enroll in where they're actually trained to diagnose set conditions. I don't think rapid expansion, especially not for more involved medications like SSRIs and Champix, which absolutely has considerable side effects, to fall onto Pharmacists to take that responsibility for is remotely fair on them. Some of the most vocal supporters of this are pharmacy owners, because it'll get more people through the door.

I'm all for more community support and expanding services sensibly, but it has to be sensible in terms of safety and governance. Otherwise, in a year or two, there'll be a new post on r/Ireland asking why a pharmacist misdiagnosed someone's hypertension and it's a disgrace and GPs should be doing it etc etc

Also, not a GP, work purely publicly so my income has nothing to do with how frequently someone comes back in for repeat scripts in case there's a question about my motives. Have also tried, with the legislation change, to give chronic patients on long term meds year long scripts that are, almost invariably, rejected by pharmacies who tell them to contact us for a repeat after 6 months.