Mr. Finbarr Heslin:

We have been dealing with a voluntary code of practice through the Irish Pet Advertising Advisory Group. I am not sure if members are aware of IPAAG but it is basically a group of interested parties in pet advertisement. That has been in existence since the middle of the last decade. Repeatedly, we will go to the members with solutions, they work and they are not introduced. There is always an excuse. Even when the regulations were printed in 2019, we were hit with the excuse that they did not apply to online platforms. They hid behind the Facebook excuse that they were not the advertisers but just facilitating display of an advertisement. If we could have a magic wish, we would definitely want it to be legally mandated.

I am sure members are aware that there are many different forms of two-step authentication. This is one that works particularly well in Ireland because we have such good mobile phone penetration and the original regulations made contact details a requirement. We use that as our template and it works very well. Another database or online platform may come up with a different form of two-step authentication. Two-step authentication is the minimum we should be looking for here. There should be traceability and some independent verification, so that when an ad comes up with a chip, there is a background store of details associated with that person. That way, if they disappear off the face of the earth, we can still track them down and they can be held to account if there is a consumer protection or animal welfare problem.