Mr. Finbarr Heslin:

I am a veterinary surgeon and this was my baby. I used to be a consultant vet to the Irish Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals. We found in the last century that we rarely had problems proving cruelty or neglect, but we had massive problems proving ownership. When chips started to become ubiquitous in the 1990s, we tried to provide better and more responsible ownership by being able to make sure that people were identifiable as the owners. It is a limited company. We have been registering animals since 2004. Between 2004 and 2015, it was entirely voluntary on the part of the owner. The bonus for the owner was that if animals got lost and the chips were scanned in a pound or at a veterinary practice, we provided the IT to make sure the details of the owner were released to whoever had the dog. As I tried to point out earlier, we effect reunifications with thousands of animals every year based on this small piece of hardware carried between their shoulder blades.