Ms Teresa Gavaghan:

The Department tries to facilitate this kind of standardisation of inspections and enforcement across local authorities. We do this by holding and facilitating annual training days for local authorities. We intend to hold one this year in September. Obviously, we could not hold them face to face during Covid, but we held one online. They help to ensure there is standardisation across local authorities. Presentations are given by senior vets who have experience in inspecting and issuing improvement notices and closure notices in local authorities. We have had presentations from people from Northern Ireland and Scotland in regard to dog control and an individual from the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, in respect of investigative techniques. In this way, we try to ensure there is standardisation of enforcement across the local authorities.