Mr. Seán Coughlan:

The Senator raises an important question. There is full data protection. The farmer signs a form to give access to his data from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to the ICBF, and that is the foundation on which everything else is built. Any organisation that needs to access that farmer's data has to get a specific authorisation, either electronically or on paper. Whether access is needed by a milk recording organisation, an AI company, a breed association or a Teagasc adviser, that access must be specifically authorised by the farmer, and we control that at the database level. Any farmer can turn on or off access to his detailed farm information at any time.