Mr. Colm Forde:

I refer to the initial questions from Deputy Browne about the derogation. Our view on that is simple. We do not think it is a legal option to us. It would be breaching European law if we allowed people other than vets to issue prescriptions. We are awaiting the Attorney General's opinion on that point.

I refer to Ms Barry Walsh's point on competition concerns. Other than Northern Ireland, no country in the European Union allows people other than vets to issue veterinary prescriptions. In terms of competition concerns, European law has precedence, so I do not think there is an issue. As Ms Barry Walsh said, we are in line with other member states. We are in line with international best practice, which is important when we export 90% of our agrifood produce.

In terms of any potential conflicts of interest, first and foremost, we are all public servants. We all take that incredibly seriously. We are fully transparent and objective in our analysis. I can assure Senator Boyhan that is not an issue that causes any conflict with us.

We have discussed a regulatory impact assessment at length with our stakeholders, including the licensed merchants association. We said we were not refusing to do an economic impact assessment. However, what one is seeking from an economic impact assessment is captured under a regulatory impact assessment, which we are doing as part of the transposition of this regulation. We have asked our stakeholders, including the licensed merchants association, to provide us with any information which can feed into the developing of that regulatory impact assessment. We cannot complete a regulatory impact assessment until we have confirmed and clarified all the various regulations. As I said earlier, this takes time because we are committed to extensive stakeholder consultation with all of our stakeholders.

In terms of the advices from the Attorney General's office, we have our own internal legal team. We wanted to make sure we provided a request to the Attorney General's office which was substantive, clearly laid out the issues and provided all the correspondence from our stakeholders, including the legal advices from the licensed merchants association. It was submitted to the Office of the Attorney General. We got confirmation it had received it on 16 December. We are still awaiting a response. I will keep asking the Attorney General to provide us with those advices. We can then provide the committee with a synopsis of what is in the Attorney General's advice when we receive it.

Many of my questions have been asked. Mr. Forde mentioned the derogation. Is he sure that no European country other than the UK had used the derogation or is doing so now? He spoke of vets issuing prescriptions. It would be similar to when the doctors set up pharmacy practices beside their business. It will have an awful negative effect. The issue really comes down to a way of life for farmers and merchants who had businesses in this country since the foundation of the State and now some of them will be put out of business because of this new regulation coming in from Europe. I am not being disrespectful - I have a lot of time and respect for officials, they have a job to do and so do we - but this does not seem to have been fought very hard at European level by the Department or anyone else. They were quite prepared to go along with the professional view that the merchants were not really capable of issuing these prescriptions. I do not agree with that. As others have said, maybe it boils down to a decision that has to be taken not in Europe or the Parliament, but in the courts.