Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 9 February 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

EU Regulation on Veterinary Medicinal Products (Resumed): Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Photo of Victor BoyhanVictor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank Ms Barry Walsh, Mr. Forde and Ms Garvan for coming in and for what, quite frankly, are their robust responses. To be fair, it is a robust system of questioning. I acknowledge that and thank them for making themselves available. It is important to say that. We welcome engagement with anybody at this committee, so I thank them for making themselves available.

Given the shortage of time, I will not dwell too much on things other than ask two or three questions. The officials might indicate when they contacted the Attorney General for his advice. Hopefully, they might come back to the committee when they have that advice. Would the chief veterinary officer of the Department be able, and agree, to make available all correspondence with the Commission? I presume the chief veterinary officer is part of Irish veterinary union. There is a conflict between the Irish veterinary union and the merchants on the issue of competition.

We have to be very careful we have open transaction and transparency in this area. This is an area of great concern for me.

In terms of the commitment to an economic impact statement in addition to the regulatory impact assessment, that was an issue the last time and the responses we got vexed many people. Could the witnesses commit to an independent economic impact statement on the ramifications of this directive?