Mr. Gerry Neary:

I will speak a little on TB but mostly on incorporation of practices for temporary veterinary practices. At present, four practices in Ireland have been purchased by two British corporate bodies, which have purchased two each. There is strong anecdotal evidence that between 40 and 100 practices have been assessed and would be at what is called a pre-purchase stage. The Veterinary Council issued a statement on ownership that anybody could own a practice. It subsequently put that under review and then deleted it from the code of conduct pending further discussion. We surveyed our members and found that approximately 86% of our members do not want lay incorporation involved in veterinary practices. The proponents of lay corporate bodies being involved in practices made the case that young vets would benefit significantly from continuing professional development, better working conditions and better relations. There was a debate in Mullingar and those young vets, who have their own Progressive Veterinary Network, voted by 86% that they did not want lay incorporation of veterinary practices. The Veterinary Council is resurveying our surveys. It has also belatedly consulted with other stakeholders.

The general gist is roughly 80% to 85% by all parties who voted to reject any proposals for lay incorporation.

I did their survey yesterday. It is being carried out by an independent company. I was amazed at the structure of the questions they were asking. The first significant question they asked was whether I was opposed to corporate ownership of veterinary practices. I did not really know how to answer it, so I said "No". The next question they asked was, "Why are you opposed to lay ownership-operation of veterinary practice?" It is a completely different question. Ownership is one matter and ownership and operation is completely different. While a case can be made that the legalities around ownership of veterinary practice are strong, our legal advice would be that one would have to put up a fairly ebullient case to convince anybody that one cannot own what one wants to own. However, what is clear is that lay corporate bodies, under the Veterinary Practice Act 2005, cannot operate veterinary practices. They cannot prescribe drugs. It would be doubtful if they could have any input into management. They cannot, according to section 58, invoice, nor can a drug company supply drugs to a limited lay-corporate body.

Probably the main two points that would be made by the protagonists of lay incorporation are first, that young veterinaries would like it - that has been absolutely flattened; and the second would relate to the capacity of these vulture funds to invest large amounts of money in infrastructure and better conditions. Those can be achieved within the present structure by ultimately giving corporate status to existing practices that are veterinarian owned. If there is an ideal solution to emerge from all this when all has settled down, I would hope that we would have the sense for all the reasons we enumerated in our report some of which have been validated even recently - I am sure the committee will be aware of costings for night services and other matters in the new systems - to realise that the solution would be that veterinaries would be given an overdue incorporation status which is available to all others involved in services industries. It would allow practices to be able to harvest some money - I am sure farmers would understand this - to invest in their practices and would be able to provide such services as MRI and CT scans and advanced equipment, which a corporate body, possibly, if it was going well, would be able to supply.