Professor Simon More:

I thank the Deputy. I will seek to answer these questions and then I might ask my colleagues to follow up. In response to the first question, certainly Denmark and the Netherlands are leading. We did not choose them solely for that reason. It was also because, as I stated in the footnote on page 3, the dairy sectors are quite similar in having a very strong export perspective and also a focus on the highest-quality product, for example, with infant formula.

The Deputy asked if we would always be behind those countries. I certainly hope not. I think they provide factors critical to success and they are fundamentally focused on an integrated, proactive, forward-thinking approach. Even the Dutch, who came later, have rolled it out over a ten-year period. We do not have that much time.

Regarding the critical factors for success, some of them, for example the banning of preventive use, will happen anyway because of the new regulation. The national database will also happen; Ireland is required to enact that. We have an opportunity to introduce benchmarking nationally by sector, by farm, by prescriber. We need clarity on the level of veterinary oversight. I believe they provide international best practice about what that means, including a one-to-one relationship between vet and farmer, mandatory veterinary visits which could be timed with other veterinary visits of course, an annual evaluation of plans, treatment guidelines, national targets and restriction on these highest priority critically important antimicrobials. I absolutely believe that we can catch up, but we need to move to this proactive approach.

In the paper, I highlight some decisions that have been made in the past and are still active, which we believe really constrain progress. They essentially do not really address some of the hard questions we need to address.

Deputy Carthy spoke about decoupling. Veterinarians have differing objectives that relate to both the welfare of the animal and also the business reality. That is accepted. Different countries have taken different approaches, such as, for example, Sweden and Italy. My understanding is that vets in Italy cannot sell veterinary medicinal products. In Denmark, the approach is different in that the percentage of profit that can be made from those products is capped at 5% to 10%. The Dutch, who did a detailed review back in 2011, took a completely different approach. They decided that the best way forward was to have prescriber benchmarking and one-to-one relationships. Essentially, this means that detailed information is necessary in the level of veterinary oversight. These are all different approaches to the same issue.