Mr. Conor Geraghty:

I will answer that question. The prescribing of dry cow tubes by co-operatives was under a provision called Schedule 8, which was introduced in 2007. That Schedule was a last-minute intervention by the Minister at the time to allow co-operative vets to prescribe tubes that, if prescribed in the same manner by an ordinary vet, would be prosecutable. It was very anti-competitive against the ordinary practising vet. With the new regulation, there was a ban on prophylactic use. For years, dry cow tubes were prescribed and advised by all the people in the know for use in blanket dry cow therapy on all cows to reduce their cell counts. That was what we were told when we were in college and it was only later, with the ability to do individual SEC counts, milk recordings, etc., that we could get away with treating animals with an active infection. Since 2021, there has been an obligation. Rather than just writing a prescription for a herd like we once did, we have to identify each cow that requires an antibiotic and not prescribe for the ones that do not require one. That is a big change that requires a lot of veterinary input.

Animal Health Ireland, AHI, has come forward with a dry cow consult to aid farmers in this regard. The vet will be paid to go onto a farm and go through those data. By extension, what we have seen is that vets are on farms for two or two and a half hours doing these dry cow consults. They are prescribing the tubes that are required, usually for a percentage of the herd. Those prescriptions may then be filled by the vet or the merchants. The merchants did not lose their share. The co-operatives did not have the number of vets needed to provide the service we are talking about. They were just signing prescriptions and selling stuff over the counter. That is from a bygone time.

It did not surprise us that, when Schedule 8 ended, this situation ended. At the same time, though, there has been a reduction in the number of tubes being prescribed. Farmers are better off because they have bought fewer tubes.