Dr. David Murphy:

I thank the Chair for the invitation to participate in this meeting. I will answer Deputy Carthy's question around whether the activity the licensed merchants are engaged in amounts to prescribing. As Dr. Beechinor indicated, based on the finding of the HPRA report, the conditions for continuing to authorise these products outside of prescription control is not an option open to us. Given the conclusions of the HPRA report, it follows that these substances or products should come under prescription control.

The regulation sees that prescription control comes under the remit of a veterinarian or the veterinary profession. That, again, is in the regulation. In terms of what licensed merchants have been doing to date, they have been dispensing anti-parasitic substances, but up to this point the majority of those substances have not subject to prescription. In that sense, I would suggest that they are not prescribing.

Under Irish legislation, prescribing is a function for veterinary practitioners, as I understand it.