Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not wish to move on from this subject. I cannot believe what I am hearing. What I have been hearing for the last ten minutes is akin to a bouncer outside a nightclub who watches a 16 year old get an ID from an 18 year old, says that is fine and tells them to go on in, it will be all right on the night. I have worked in companies as both a manager and an employee. I have never been asked to sign on behalf of management or on behalf of the owner. If I was, I do not think my signature could have been accepted. I was always answerable to the manager or owner. The witnesses are basically saying that I can buy a veterinary practice in the morning and ask any qualified vet who is prepared to put his or her letters behind it to sign my application for me. There are not even checks and balances to find out if the vet is an employee of the person who owns the practice or the building.

Suppose the vet is an employee. If that vet decides to live by what he or she has signed and provide a 24-hour service, and if I as the employer decide it is not economically viable to send him or her out at 4 a.m. to deliver lambs, we might part company by the end of the week. Do I still have certification for the next four years? The witnesses have given me no indication, in their report or anywhere else, that the VCI checks what the vet's role in the company is, apart from verifying that he or she is a qualified vet and signed the application. The VCI has been ignoring the fact that there is a fourth party in the relationship. Is it not the case that in the context of the TB eradication scheme, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine recently stated that the service provider cannot be an employee of the practice? If that is correct, and I am led to believe it is, can the witnesses provide an answer? The VCI has allowed this relationship to develop by totally ignoring the fourth party because it suits the VCI to do so. It undermines its own role in policing this code by turning its back on the fact that it will accept a signature from anybody, on anybody else's behalf, once the signatory has gone to UCD or wherever to get the right letters after his or her name. The VCI is not even interested in what the vet's role within that organisation is, other than to note that he or she has the qualification. A week later he or she might not be working under the licence the VCI grants or in the building for which it has granted a licence.