A Belfast pharmacist has been hit with a suspended sentence for unlawfully supplying “over 300,000 co-codamol tablets” between 2017 and 2020, the Department of Health for Northern Ireland (DHNI) announced last week (June 28).

Gerard Cullinan, 48, was sentenced on Friday to 11 months’ imprisonment suspended for three years at Laganside Crown Court, it said.

Cullinan is the director of Castlereagh Pharmacy in East Belfast, which also received £8,000 in fines, it added. 

Read more: PDA demands axe for GPhC after inspection numbers collapse

An investigation by the DHNI’s medicines regulatory group (MRG) found that between January 2017 and June 2020, Cullinan had unlawfully supplied controlled prescription medication including co-codamol and fentanyl.

It also found that he had made “a significant number of record-keeping breaches” for Class A controlled drugs including “fentanyl, tapentadol, methylphenidate, morphine and oxycodone”, and that he “[failed] to maintain controlled drugs registers”.

“Blatant abuse” of position

MRG senior medicines enforcement officer Peter Moore, who directed the investigation, said that Cullinan’s conviction showed the “serious consequences” of bypassing medicines supply chain regulations.

And MRG head Canice Ward added that Cullinan had engaged in “the blatant abuse of the privileged position of a pharmacist by diverting a large quantity of prescription medicines, thereby placing the public at risk”.

Ward said that Northern Ireland’s pharmacies are “subject to regular departmental inspection and compliance visits”.

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Cullinan will be “further referred” to the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the DHNI statement said.

According to the PSNI’s register, Cullinan has been subject to interim conditions of work since July 2020, which were most recently renewed in March 2024.

Among other things, the interim orders preclude Cullinan from “the operation or management of any pharmacy, and in particular, Castlereagh Pharmacy” except for paying bills, employing staff and “PAYE matters”.

Regulation latest

Last month, the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) repeated its call for the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) to be stripped of its role as pharmacy premises regulator after its rate of inspections declined to the extent that a pharmacy would only expect to have a routine inspection “once every 15-17 years”.

In March, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) slammed the PSNI for “registration errors”, taking too long to complete fitness-to-practise (FtP) cases and an “inability” to provide “accurate information”. 

And in February, C+D reported that Northern Ireland pharmacist Richard Lyness had been removed from the register after being convicted on 18 charges over three court cases between 2021 and 2023, including harassment and sending sectarian death threats, as well as admitted and repeated cocaine use.