Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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Agriculture has an awful lot more regulation. The Minister's advice to somebody going to buy a puppy is to do their homework, check if it came from a puppy farm and check that it is not stolen, but the public cannot do that. That is what we heard in the earlier session. The pilot scheme by Fido and Dogs.ie has a pre-verified system but the other three databases do not. As vets are not doing the implantations for them, large-scale dog breeding establishments are moving to those other databases because they know they will not be under the same scrutiny. Agriculture and animals that go into the food chain are very well-regulated. We are identifying lacunas in the area of companion animals. We are telling the public to do their homework but they cannot.