Mr. David Lynch:

I will introduce my team. Ms Hazel Sheridan, superintending veterinary inspector, will speak on the animal health regulation. Mr. Tom Loftus is a principal officer in the meat hygiene division and will address the fees element of my presentation. Mr. Donal Coleman is a senior inspector of plant reproductive material. We do not have one official with us that perhaps we should have to speak on plant health law, but he was called away to a meeting in Vilnius. He will be available if the committee feels the needs to speak to him. I am a senior veterinarian and my main area of responsibility is food safety in the veterinary area. I will address the proposal on official controls. We will all say a few words and then take questions.

I thank the Chairman for inviting us. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is happy to have this opportunity to discuss these proposals with the committee to ensure the application of food and feed law, rules on animal health, plant health, plant reproductive material and plant protection products. As indicated in the information note provided for the committee, Ireland welcomes the broad thrust of the draft proposal on officials controls, subject to consideration of the detail of each article which is taking place in Brussels. On 6 May, after much internal discussion, the Commission adopted a series of proposals which have been called, A New Package for Healthier Animals and Plants for a Safer Food Chain, a racy title. The package consists of four proposals on rules for specific sectors and official controls in these sectors and also a fifth relating to the management of expenditure in these sectors, which is separate. The four proposals are on plant health law; rules on seeds and propagating plants; animal health law; and rules on official controls that will apply in each area. All four are being debated in Council working groups and will in the near future also be debated in committees of the European Parliament. I understand the proposals on plant health law, animal health and welfare and plant propagation products will be discussed by the agriculture committee, while the proposal on official controls will go to the environment committee.

I will comment on the proposal relating to the rules on official controls. Regulation 882/2004 on official controls is in place and performs to ensure compliance by operators with food and feed rules, animal health and animal welfare. If agreed, this proposal will replace that regulation. The regulation will be addressed to competent authorities. Essentially, it is designed to tell us how we perform our duties and will lay down rules for how these authorities must implement official controls and perform other official activities relating to operators, including farmers, food companies, feed companies, restaurants, caterers, retailers etc. The competent authorities affected by this proposal will be the Department, the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority in the context of fisheries, the Health Service Executive in the context of restaurants and retail establishments and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.

Under the proposal, the competent authority must have sufficient resources; officers must be properly trained and controls must operate according to documented procedures, be risk-based, as much as possible, be unannounced and carried out in an efficient manner without creating undue difficulty or putting undue expense on the operators. A report must be generated after every control and a copy given to the operator in order that he or she will know the outcome of the inspection or audit. Operators must be given an opportunity to appeal the outcome of a control and annual reports must be produced on the activities carried out.

This proposal will differ slightly from the existing regulation in so far it will have a broader scope. It will cover plant health law and plant reproductive material, which the existing regulation does not, and will concern the new rules for these areas when they are agreed. In addition, the new regulation will apply to the new rules on animal health when they are agreed. Ms Sheridan will comment on these. This will include rules relating to residues of veterinary medicines.

It will apply common rules to all animals and goods of animal and plant origin entering and leaving the EU. Implementation will be carried out in border control posts, which is slightly different to the current system. The regulation will apply "Lisbonisation" rules by allowing for the introduction of implementing rules and delegated rules and the conversion of some existing regulations into implementing acts or delegated acts, as appropriate. It will commit to the development of integrated information management systems across the community. The regulation will require that the carrying out of official controls be self-financing through the collection of fees. There will be exceptions for micro-industries - namely, those employing less than ten people and with an annual turnover of less than €2 million - and certain rules in other sectors, such as organic products. My colleague will address the matter of fees.

There will be tougher penalties for non-compliance, which in general must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Where intentional violations of the provisions of the regulation are discovered, financial penalties must at least offset the economic advantage sought by the operator through the violation. This is an attempt to address food fraud.

The proposal was developed by the Commission through a series of working group meetings with experts from member states during the course of 2012. In the early part of 2013, all of the internal discussions took place within the Commission's services. They were quite protracted. It was not until 6 May of this year that the proposal was published. That left very little time for the Irish Presidency to make any progress on it. On 7 and 8 May, the days following publication, a two-day seminar was held in Brussels under the auspices of the Irish Presidency and COPA-COGECA, the umbrella body for industry stakeholders, to discuss the proposals. We had one meeting of a Council working group during the Irish Presidency, which I chaired. Two subsequent meetings were held during the summer and in September. Two further meetings will take place during the Lithuanian Presidency and then we will have to see how we get on when the Greek Presidency begins.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is representing Ireland at these meetings. I generally speak at the meetings. We work in consultation with the Department of Health and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. We have pre-meetings with both agencies. In addition, there was a period of public consultation and we received a number of submissions from stakeholders. The public consultation period ended on 27 September and we received four submissions on the proposal. The proposal is a long one. There are 162 articles and to date we have only reached Article 24. Progress is difficult because of the widened scope of the regulation and there are many stakeholders even among the competent authorities that are affected by it. Discussions are slow and it will be some years before finality is reached. That is as far as we have got. If I may, I will hand over to my colleague who will discuss fees.