Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I just want to follow on from the point raised by Deputy Fitzmaurice. I am aware that there is an issue when a dog is scanned because there are four different databases. The biggest issue is probably the number of dogs that are not microchipped at all. With that in mind and with a view to perhaps incentivising or encouraging people to microchip their dog, could technology be used? For my own information, is it a universal scanner that reads all chips? There are four different databases that probably relate to the four different producers of microchips. I presume the microchips are all standard and there is a universal reader. From my own knowledge, I know that to scan a dog, you need to catch it, have it in your possession and be very close to it. Where are we with technology? Does technology exist anywhere else in the world that can be used to scan a microchip on a dog from a distance and indeed, to tell, from a distance, whether that dog actually even has a microchip? The point I am making is that down the line, if we get the legislation right and for enforcement, perhaps such a thing could be used as leverage to get people to microchip their dogs at an early stage. It could be somewhat like the television licence man or whatever, and owners would know that there could be somebody passing on the road outside their fence that is able to tell from a distance that the dog is not microchipped. Am I going down the wrong road completely, or could that be a potential future way of ensuring, at least from the outset, that more of our dog population is indeed microchipped?