Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

One thing needs to be clarified for the record of the committee, and we need to live in the real world. I am a farmer; there are plenty of farmers here. A person will not go to the vet and say, "Give me a prescription; I will use it somewhere else down the road." We would be living in cuckoo world if we believed that. Let us get real about it. There is an onus on a person if the vet is testing his or her cattle and is doing everything else, only for the vet to see him or her going down the road.

This does not work that way. That is not how rural Ireland works. That is why the prescription is the big problem. We need the alternative of training a person, bringing them to whatever standard is required and give them a timeframe to get to that. That could be a good solution to cover what the witnesses are on about.