Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Cathaoirleach. From all the interchanges there, I resent very much the assertion made by the Department official, Ms Garvan, which insinuated that farmers would not know the dose they should be giving to their animals. As a farmer for many years, I know what kind of dose the man would have wanted. In my case, I would go to the likes of Terence O'Shea for an animal dose or drench, and for minerals and different small things like that. To think that all of this would be taken away from them at the stroke of a pen because Europe directed it is a lot of nonsense to me. I feel the vets have enough to do and are doing their job very well. This will create a monopoly. The person who will pay the piper at the end of the day will be the farmer or the fellow who is buying the dose. That has to be realised by the Department. We need to have a bit of competition, but the little there is has been taken away completely.

The Department is saying that a farmer does not know when an animal needs a dose or some thing like that. He will know if he needs to get a vet. This is already happening. Every one of us here seems to be united in the fact this will create a monopoly. A scenario is being created that none of us asked for. Everything was going fine. The co-ops and distributors are all lovely people who have been doing well by the farmer. If they were not doing well by the farmer, they would not be there at all and would not be treating the farmers fairly. I will be very disappointed it happens to be the case in September that the merchant alliance and that crowd will lose whatever licence they had to do what they were doing. They were providing a great service at critical times for farmers, such as calving and lambing times, as well as what they put into the baths for sheep with foot rot or whatever. God almighty, it is only common sense if there is a lame lamb that a bath would be filled with this kind of a wash. Surely, the Department does not seriously think it will improve anything by having to get a prescription from the vet. It is being said that the vet will give out the prescription and the farmer can go where he likes with it, but that will not happen. The vet will give the prescription and the medicine himself. That rules out men like Terence O'Shea from Glengarriff who sells to the people of Kenmare and elsewhere in County Kerry and does so very well. There are several others - I do not know them all, but I know this man very well - who are providing this valuable service. I am absolutely disgusted to hear someone saying we might be better off going to the vet than getting the doses sent from a merchant who is doing it now. Maybe she has something to say about it. I am very disappointed with that remark.