Mr. Conor Geraghty:

As regards over-prescribing, we have seen evidence that is not going on. Since January we have had full control of intramammary prescriptions and the opposite has been the case. The vast majority of vets take their ethical duties and responsibilities to the Veterinary Council very seriously because there is a serious penalty. If one ends up in front of the Veterinary Council, one is talking about four years of High Court proceedings. It is a legal matter and we have helped and supported people during that process but the reality is that if it goes against them, an ordinary family business cannot go to the High Court for an appeal, which seems wrong because everyone is entitled to appeal.

The number of complaints against vets in Ireland is tiny. The number of complaints against vets involved in farm animal practice are in single digits every year. We do not have many rogue vets, so I will put that one out of the way.

On prescribing and dispensing, no one ever asked us whether we did or did not want it. It was assumed that we did not want it. There is a large number of vets in the country who do not carry a lot of stock but a certain number do. If one takes it there are 450 to 500 people with licensed merchants licences, they are the practices that are interested in carrying stock. That is out of 750, so there are another 300 who do not carry much stock or just carry what they need to treat animals.

The reality is that if it was decoupled in the morning, there would be a number of issues that would affect other actors in the field and, to be honest, I do not think it ever got to us because other people slammed it down first. I am talking about end-users. There is a bank holiday weekend coming up and if was I go to a cow on a Friday night and prescribe something, the farmer would be waiting until Tuesday morning to fill the prescription in a decoupled situation.

We are not talking about antiparasitics. If you decouple, you decouple. End users might not like that system. As far as vets are concerned, we do not believe it will make that much difference because what is happening at the moment, unlike the human system, is that in many cases the prescription fee is included in the bit of margin on the product and all you end up with in a decoupled situation is getting charged double. You are going to get a prescription fee on one side and a margin on the dispenser’s side.

The human system in Ireland is a very expensive system. An unconscionable amount of money goes into it. As vets we would say we probably provide a better service on farms than those same farmers might get from their GPs. We are not disrespecting GPs in any way but we are proud of the service we provide. We provide it on a 365-day, 24-7 obligation which is very difficult to provide. It is difficult-----