Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If there was a two-month period when there was no vet in a practice it comes back to the issue of ownership and the policing of same. More specifically, going back to the Veterinary Practice Act 2005, which according to the report of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission would appear to prohibit vets from incorporating. I am conscious that Ms Muldoon said that the VCI does not have the details on the incorporation of any practices. Was there ever a feeling on behalf of the VCI, based on what was in the 2005 Act, that it should have those details, given that a lot of practices have probably built up valuable property over time? In most instances practices probably have a property company and a trading entity, which would be the practice itself. Surely some of those practices would have been operating outside of the remit of the 2005 Act, even before we come to lay operators coming in?