Mr. Peter Collins:

We are confusing the derogation of who can prescribe. Under Article 105(4), the derogation applies only to vets or persons who were professionally prescribing medicines prior to 2019. At that stage, RPs were not prescribing those medicines because they were not prescription-only medicines, POMS, as Dr. Fanning said. When the regulation came into force in 2019, everything was still okay. It was subsequent to that, when the HPRA decided those medicines became POMs, that the RPs were outside the derogation loop.