Mr. Finbarr Murphy:

I thank Deputy Cahill. There are a couple of very small technical amendments that we feel would strengthen the Bill as presented. The first is on page 4 of the Bill. It is an amendment to section 113 of the Veterinary Practice Act 2005 and relates to section 7(c) of the Bill.

Section 7(c) states: "in subsections (5), (7), and (8), “by the substitution of registered person for eligible veterinary practitioner”. This has been phrased the wrong way around. This should say “by substitution of eligible veterinary practitioner for registered person”, in each place that it occurs. This is just a drafting issue.

Section 9B (3) states: “If more than one person carries out the practice of veterinary medicine at a premises and a question arises as to who is the registered person”. We suggest that should read “who is the eligible veterinary practitioner”. It was omitted to change “registered person” to “eligible veterinary practitioner”.

Section 139, subsection (1) states:

A veterinary practice, operating from registered veterinary premises, shall be wholly owned by veterinary practitioners (registered under Part 4) who practice veterinary medicine from said premises, and certificates of suitability for those premises shall only be sought, obtained and retained in the name of an eligible veterinary practitioner (as defined in section 138) .

That might benefit from an additional line to make it clear that it is the responsibility of the Veterinary Council of Ireland to ensure that that situation happens. A line that could go in there would be along the lines of: “it is the responsibility of the Veterinary Council of Ireland to take all measures necessary to ensure that the conditions of this subsection are complied with”. This is so that we do not simply have an Act on the Statute Book, but so that the Veterinary Council of Ireland actively enforces it. To repeat: "it is the responsibility of Veterinary Council of Ireland to take all measures necessary to ensure that the conditions of this subsection are complied with".

We felt that the Bill could benefit from clarifying the last sentence under section 139(4). Subsection (4) states: "For the purposes of this section, exemptions from the requirements for total veterinary ownership and eligible veterinary practitioner status shall be granted to registered animal charities and veterinary teaching institutions." We thought this sentence would benefit from a definition of "registered animal charities and veterinary teaching institutions". We therefore suggest an amendment, after where it says, “shall be granted to”. Instead of “registered animal charities and veterinary teaching institutions”, we would suggest “shall be granted to one: an institution providing an approved programme of education to enable the person to be registered under Part 4, in other words, to be registered as a vet, or two: a charitable organisation that exclusively provides subsidised veterinary services to the public on a charitable basis”. In this subsection, "charitable organisation" has the meaning given to it by section 2 of the Charities Act 2009. This is to avoid a loophole whereby somebody's lay corporate bodies could claim to be charities or trusts, and that we define what we mean by “animal charity”.

These are the only amendments or suggestions we had, Chair.