Mr. Peadar Ó Scanaill:

Gabhaim buíochas don Chathaoirleach, do na Teachtaí Dála agus do na Seanadóirí as ucht an deis teacht os comhair an choiste.

I am very pleased to be here to answer as many of the questions asked as I can. They are pointed and relevant.

To provide some background information, being a veterinarian is in my bones, on both sides of my family. My dad was a vet, as were my uncles on my mum's and dad's sides. I have cousins who are vets and a daughter who is studying veterinary medicine in Budapest. That was mentioned and I will return to the point. My area is large animal services. Believe it or not, my grandmother and great grandmothers were dairy farmers on the main street of Swords. Cows were milked in Swords and my brother Padraig continues to do so. He has a substantial herd in the Swords area and appears on milk cartons. There were 11 of us in the family, two of whom are vets. Therefore, the profession is very important to us.

Before I answer Deputy Martin Kenny's questions, this issue came up in the council for several years. I am its president and proud to be. This is my eighth year on the council. A good while ago, three or four years ago, questions were being asked about who could or could not buy a practice and whether a corporate could be involved. It was clear to us that a corporate could not be involved. The question was always about ownership. There were provisions in the code that were almost contradictory. There is no doubt that there are vets who work for corporates. How, therefore, could a corporate not own a practice? The council had to study the Act. Had we done this beforehand, we would have been far better for it. By the time we got the reaction of stakeholders, we realised we needed to go much wider. As the registrar said, there is no mention of ownership in the Act. In fact, the practice, as an entity, is not mentioned. What is clear is the description of the practise of veterinary medicine as anything to do with animal health and diseases, any advice thereon, any treatment, surgery and certification provided. It goes on to mention the post mortem and rectal examination of mares. Anything to do with animals is laid out in it. It is very clear in section 54 who can or cannot do this for reward or otherwise. If it concerns veterinary medicine, it is very much confined to veterinary practitioners only. If it is related to veterinary nursing, it applies to veterinary nurses only. That is our focus. When we were being asked who could buy and sell a practice, if a practitioner was to retire but would continue to own the practice or if a spouse owned half of the practice, the council was never involved. We were asked these questions and when we examined the code, we found inconsistencies and felt clarification was needed.

In response to the statement that there is no prohibition on ownership, it is the consequences of such a statement that are the problem. As a stand-alone statement, a practice and its ownership are not mentioned in the Act. These statements have knock-on effects and Deputy Penrose picked up on the point that it was the operation of the practice that mattered. People were not really talking about ownership, although they were using the word "own". They were actually trying to become operators. The Act is clear in its description of a veterinary practice, who can and cannot practise for reward or otherwise for animal owners, an industry or an educational employer. To answer the question about how to control such things, heretofore we were never interested in the ownership of a practice. We were only interested in vets. Our role will involve the regulation of the service provided for the public. Ownership is a sideline issue. It is a distraction and has been very divisive and distracting, but in the consultation we are absolutely and specifically following what the Act tells us, that only a veterinary practitioner can carry out what is described in section 53 as the act of veterinary medicine for a third party and animal owners for reward or otherwise.

That is what we are primarily speaking about here - the farming community, horse owners and animal owners in general.

I was asked when we got legal advice on section 54. We got various legal advices, some dating back as far back as 2014. In its legal advice, which goes back even further than that, the Competition Authority described the section as vague. The legal advice that we were coming in with was that owners were not there. As I said, the wording was introduced we would be the first to put our hands up and say that consultation would have been far better if that had come beforehand. The consultation is now going ahead and everyone knows that this is definitely under review.

Who is buying and selling? Practices have always been bought and sold. The Veterinary Council of Ireland has no hand, act or part in any of that. It has no remit in respect of who is buying or selling practices, which are usually passed down from generation to generation. Very often, they are in the hands of others or there may be part owners or investors. However, owners and investors do not influence in any way the decision of how many blood tests, services or X-rays are performed. The clinical autonomy of service must at all times be in the hands of the vets and that is where we are heading with all of this.