Dr. Paul Corkery:

The Veterinary Council of Ireland has issued guidance to vets specifically on anti-parasitic medicines and on what they need to do. As long as they have a customer-patient practice relationship, or in other words, as long as the vet has been on that farm once and knows about the farm, they do not have to visit in order to prescribe anti-parasitic medicines. I would make the point from a veterinary perspective that in most cases in Ireland, because farmers are so well up to speed with antiparasitics and because they use them so frequently, we are not looking at clinical cases. No diagnosis is necessary. In other words, the use of antiparasitics is almost as necessary as feed is to pastoral systems. One doses and there are some ancillary tests now that are being used more frequently, such as fecal egg count tests. Those can be provided through dung samples and so on. They will help to identify resistance but there is not the necessity for the vet to visit the farm every time an anti-parasitic is required. Remember that the antiparasitics are not just those used for worms but for lice. For example, Senator Lombard happened to mention the health certificate that is used on the dairy farms. At the time the vet is doing the process, if the client asked the vet and if the vet is willing, that would be the time at which one could plan out, as some of my colleagues have said, the herd health plan for the year.

I remind the Senator that the Department is running a targeted advisory service on animal health scheme, which is an EU co-funded scheme. That scheme has only been opened up since March and there are 14,000 farmers already who have looked for this co-funded visit from a vet to be able to provide this health plan for the year. It will cover issues such as lice, mange, scab in sheep and roundworms. Where there is evidence that the products have not been working, the vet will discuss with the farmer the possibility of taking dung samples and the vet can analyse the dung samples. If this system continues as it is, the likelihood will be that there will be savings here for farmers and they will not end up using products that are not working. They will use products that will work effectively. In the long term, this will be an important solution to keep anti-parasitic medicines working in this country.