Ms Niamh Muldoon:

I will open the response and then ask the Veterinary Council president to assist with some additional comments. We at the Veterinary Council regulate for a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service, so it is a particularly onerous expectation on all our vets, but the truth is that that requirement is there. The Chairman referred to the need to call vets out at different hours of the day and to different times of the year being particularly busy periods.

As for some of the terms contained in the veterinary medicine regulations, there are some terms the Veterinary Council intends to include in our code of professional conduct. Some of those terms refer to either a clinical examination, which may be required in some circumstances, or, in the alternative, a proper assessment of the health status of an animal. Ultimately, the guidance and the code the Veterinary Council issues will require a threshold of knowledge to be held by any veterinary practitioner before he or she discharges the privilege of prescribing. Once that threshold of knowledge is met, that threshold being a true and accurate knowledge of the farm, the animal, the herd, the husbandry, the conditions and the history, there is a very strong knowledge base on which to rely before issuing any diagnosis or prescription. A vet is not required to go out on every single occasion to the animal or to the yard. What the Veterinary Council, in terms of the definitions, is saying is that once a threshold of knowledge has been reached, there is a safe basis on which to provide a diagnosis and-or prescription.

The veterinary medicine regulations refer to risk in the recitals. We talk about the avoidance or minimising of the use of antimicrobial medicines in particular but also all medicines. The rule of the Veterinary Council is to offer some guidance in our code to ensure sufficient knowledge of the circumstance and input to seek to offer strong disease control. I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Moffitt, who may be able to make some further comments.