Mr. Michael Sheahan:

The microchip is already part of the system. The passport, or now the smart card, indicates whether the beast is part of the system. We already have a central database. As I said, it is part of our AIM system. It is not as sophisticated as the cattle one but it is there. Thus an awful lot of the building blocks are already there.

As I said earlier, it took us a long time to get to where we are with cattle but we have gradually improved it. In fairness to the horse sector, it has come a long way in a fairly short space of time as well and, as I said, a lot of the building blocks are there. That final step, that is, the movement thing, is the one step that is missing. As the Deputy said, on the cattle side, when a person's calf moves to the mart, that is recorded electronically, and when it moves to another farm, that is recorded. The movement side is the one piece that is missing in the horse sector. The other parts of the system are in place so it is not going to take an awful lot to move it on and to have it be something like what we have in the cattle sector.