The Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has said that prescribing by nurses will be law by Christmas.
Speaking at a national conference of the Irish Nurses Organisation in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, Ms Harney said regulations would have to follow the legislation outlining the scope of such prescribing.
Ms Harney said she wanted to see nursing made more attractive and to enable nurses to do more.
The minister said more patients could be effectively managed by clinical nurse specialists than by consultants.
Earlier at the conference, the INO challenged Government health policy which it said involved extensive recruitment of nurses from countries such as India, the Philippines and Nigeria.
The INO President, Madeline Spiers, said there were ethical issues about recruiting almost 3,000 nurses this year from less well-off regions when over 1,800 Irish trained nurses and midwives emigrated last year to more attractive posts abroad.
Ms Spiers claimed there was a lack of planning with regard to nursing manpower.
She said that in the last 12 months, the INO had been forced to seek an independent review of nurse staffing levels on 34 occasions.
Ms Spiers also called for a whistleblower's policy for the health service to ensure greater levels of transparency and to enable staff who have genuine concerns about standards and practices to voice these concerns, safe in the knowledge they will not become a victim to the system.
She said that despite the 1998 Commission on Nursing Report and the 2001 National Health Strategy, the health service was still failing to fully utilise nurses and midwives.
The one-day conference will be addressed later by the head of the Health Service Executive, Professor Brendan Drumm.
