Mr. Ray Doyle:

That is a very good question. Only the Department can answer that for the Deputy. In theory it should be live before 1 December because we cannot implement the regulation without it. Having it ready for 1 December seems to be a challenge.

I return to the mitigations on that. The direction of travel and how the NVPS is currently written will still not be a mitigating factor to prevent negative effects on our businesses. From the farmers' point of view, vets are required to engage in a client-patient relationship before they can write a prescription. Even the co-ops that want to hire vets will be running from behind to visit all these farms in advance of writing prescriptions if it comes in on 1 December and if the NVPS is successfully integrated with all our systems. There is a major challenge for the software companies to get it to integrate with our systems in a way that ensures a farmer can come up to the desk and find that it is integrated with the Department's system. I believe 1 December will be extremely optimistic. I do not think it will happen.