Mr. Finbarr Heslin:

I would not describe Ireland as a halfway house. The control point from the perspective of welfare and probity of data is more about who is certifying, rather than where they are certifying. There are many data across Europe that indicate veterinary certification, whether by veterinary surgeons or nurses, creates a better system than non-veterinary certification. My point about the four databases here and whether a central database might be a better system is that there are many data on those four databases, which can communicate efficiently with the central database provided by the Government. If, as we proposed last year, we coded for a centralised system, where all four would have a firewall, but there would be traceability across databases, there is a difficulty in that it should be independently hosted. We would see the Department as being the best host. We do not want to host it because, as the Deputy says, we have a vested interest. I am sure some of our competitors in the market would not be happy if we hosted a system that had some insight into their data. If we had a magic wish, a centralised API hosted by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine would solve all the problems.

Regarding relationships between individual databases and their clients, Mr. Savage referred to the Irish Kennel Club, which has a certain parish that it is integrated with, while we are integrated with the veterinary side.

I am not sure we need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to get the four wheels talking to each other, as it were.