Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----where we are. One of two things has happened. I might outline a scenario for the Minister of State. A derogation was provided for in the regulations and that derogation, we are now told, is null and void because it was not implemented properly, if it is the case responsible persons were not prescribing. In my view, however, they were, and I think anybody who has knowledge of the sector would agree.

The Department's case is that due to its misreading of the regulations, the derogation does not apply. The European Commission has been asked on several occasions, including by my party colleague, Chris MacManus MEP, about whether the derogation can apply to responsible persons and the response has been that it is up to the member state to adjudicate on whether a derogation applies. It is the Minister of State's Department that has said, consistently over recent months, that the derogation does not apply to responsible persons, in a manner that I would say is against common sense and the legalities of that.

The Minister of State mentioned the urgency of the regulations. The EU regulations came into effect in January 2022 and the Department deferred part of its implementation. It seems to me that internal departmental deliberations were legally offside, as the law stands.

The urgency arises from the need of the Department to become legally on-side in respect of the regulations. That opens up the bigger issue of how the Department deals with EU regulations. Time and again, when issues are raised at this committee, we are told we cannot do this or we must do that because of EU regulations as if these EU regulations came out of thin air. The Government, in other words the Department, was represented at every step of the way in relation to these regulations. I was a member of the European Parliament when they came through and we would depend on the Department to flag up potential issues in terms of its implementation at an Irish level. Nobody saw it. The people who were supposed to see it are the people who are telling us now that it cannot be done.

I must go back to the point as to the real willingness and sense within the Department to find a solution. It strikes me, if the Minister of State is considering legal opinion that has come from third parties at this late stage in the day, that there has not been that drive within the Department to find a solution. We all want to see antimicrobial and anti-parasitical resistance tackled. We all accept that it is important but we also acknowledge that there are crucial cohorts, in terms of animal welfare and in terms of the dispensing of medicines and the ability of farmers to be able to access retail outlets to purchase that and other material that are under threat if this proposed legislation, as we were led to believe would transpire, goes ahead.