Mr. Daragh Quinn:

I thank the Senator for the opportunity to address his questions. All pharmacists spend at least four years in university, with one year of postgraduate study. Their training is essentially about pharmaceuticals. All pharmaceuticals are common for both humans and animals. Many pharmaceuticals at the core of this discussion, mainly antiparasitics, are routinely supplied by pharmacists in community pharmacies in their everyday jobs. That is done in a competent manner because those pharmacists have done five years of study. A human is a different species from a cow or sheep but the drugs and medicines are the same. There are different dose rates for each species but the same principle applies to each species. Some pharmacists have undertaken postgraduate masters' degrees in veterinary pharmacy. All pharmacists undertake continuing professional development and continuing education annually, which is regulated and monitored in Ireland. As a component of that, I as a veterinary pharmacist undertake veterinary pharmacy as part of my continuing professional development.

Pharmacists have a considerable knowledge in that regard and that builds upon their core education as pharmacists. In discussion of medicines, the pharmacist really should be the top of the tree because they are the experts on medicines. We work in primary healthcare with our doctors, nurses and physiotherapists in a collaborative practise so that everybody works as part of that team for the optimum outcome for the healthcare of the patient. It would be nice to apply the same principle to veterinary medicine and that there would be a collaborative effort involving the veterinarians, the veterinarian nurses, the pharmacists, the responsible persons and the farmer - the animal owner at the end of the day. We all have a responsibility to sustain these medicines so that we get the best outcome from them and animal welfare is primary to our input.

To address the Senator's second question, the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, established a task force back in 2019 to review these medicines. It became apparent subsequent to its review that there were issues with regard to the antiparasitic medicines. There were issues of resistance, within the different parasites, to the particular medicines, that had become apparent since the previous review occasion. That meant that the exemption Ireland had availed of when SI 785/2007 - Infectious Diseases Maintenance Allowance (Increased Payment) Regulations, 2007 was implemented, an exemption for prescription status for these medicines recommended by Europe because Ireland had no evidence at that stage of any resistance, had changed.

Come the review by the HPRA expert task force, a group of seven experts from different backgrounds including the Department of agriculture, University College Dublin, Teagasc and various other sources, decreed that because there was evidence of resistance in that incidence, the antiparasitics had to be upgraded to a prescription-only medicine. As pharmacists, I referred earlier to the fact that we counter prescribe antiparasitic medicines for our human patients on a regular basis. To extend that, as a veterinary pharmacist, I have counter prescribed, or de facto prescribed, these same medicines in my practice for over 30 years, as have many of my colleagues and the responsible persons who are suitably trained in that regard.

In essence, what we have been doing is prescribing these medicines in response to the symptoms presented by the animal owner or the animal keeper whereby we use a protocol and ask a routine series of questions. As pharmacists, we ask who the patient is; what the background is; whether there have been any other medication supplied; the cohort species; the weight; and the background details that are required. We establish a picture and are not making a diagnoses but respond to the symptoms and use the data that is available. Nowadays, this data is routinely available be it a fecal egg count test, a bulk milk sample test or post mortem results. We can use this data as can my colleagues who are responsible persons, to make a judicious decision or recommendation and on the back of that, we direct a course of treatment.

The word "prescribe" is derived from Latin. It is a long time since I did Latin under the auspices of Father Flannan and I was not his top scholar but scribereis to write and pre scribereis "direct to write". When we put that in context in modern English, we are actually writing a direction and that is what we have been doing. We have been giving a direction. Even though it was not written into the statute in 2007, we have been doing that in practice as far back as the last 20 years. I would like that to be taken into consideration by this committee and hopefully we will progress on. I apologise if I have exceeded the time.