The Dublin Circuit Criminal Court dismissed Anne Rossi’s appeal against ten District Court convictions, affirming the District Court orders after a de novo hearing. The court found her guilty on four counts of supplying a prescription-only product without a necessary prescription and four counts of distributing a product without Irish market authorisation. It imposed fines totalling €8,000 and ordered her to pay €5,170 towards the prosecutor’s costs.
The offences were alleged to have occurred between November 2014 and February 2015 at Rossi’s clinic in Clontarf. The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) alleged that she supplied and administered Dysport, a botulinum toxin product, without patient-specific prescriptions and imported it from a UK supplier despite the product lacking authorisation for the Irish market.
The court heard that HPRA officers seized Dysport vials from a clinic fridge during a February 2015 search. An Ipsen report admitted in evidence identified botulinum toxin type A and lactose in the tested samples. Two clients testified that Rossi administered Botox to them without another person present. One described a reaction after a later top-up; both said they had no complaint about the treatment.
In a cautioned statement read to the court, Rossi admitted administering Dysport while she was “in between doctors”, without a doctor present or prescriptions for the customers. She also said she had used prescriptions bearing a doctor’s name to order the product and acknowledged that the doctor did not know they were being used that way. The court found the prescriptions were made out to Rossi, carried the same date and did not name individual patients.
Rossi’s husband disputed aspects of the search and interview, including whether officers had assured the couple that the matter would not become a criminal process. The court said those claims had not been put to the Authority’s witnesses in cross-examination and gave greater weight to their unchallenged evidence on the search and interview.
The court concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Rossi knowingly supplied Dysport without necessary prescriptions and knowingly imported and distributed a product not authorised for the Irish market. It dismissed the appeal and affirmed the District Court orders. The judgment records ten convictions under appeal, but identifies findings on four counts under each of Regulations 5(1) and 6(1)(a), for eight counts in total. It does not explain the disposition of the other two convictions.