Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the witnesses from the Department. We have been here before. I was a member of the previous committee. In this business, you take on issues and try to have as much input and influence regarding them as you can, and then they are decided upon and you move on. That is what we did with this one, yet we are back dealing with it. To me, that implies the system is not working and changes will be needed.

I have a couple of points for the officials. It is all about antiparasitic and antimicrobial resistance. Where there is a POM vaccine and the vet has given the prescription, how is antimicrobial or antiparasitic resistance affected by not allowing a merchant to sell the product? If the vet gives the prescription, why is a monopoly being created regarding the sale of the product?

I cannot accept what was said about the 85,000 prescriptions and only 85 going to the merchants because of the time of the year. The merchants could have sold many or nearly all of the products. The officials must admit the system is not working and that is why the measure has not been enacted yet. Once the Department admits it is not working, a solution may be thrashed out. The Department referred in its statement to what is not appropriate at this time for the vaccines. Will it be appropriate sooner, and if so, how is that changing, altering or affecting antiparasitic resistance and the aim of eliminating parasites?

I get the point that the NVPS technology will take time but I cannot accept that one in a thousand prescriptions is going back to the merchants. You might as well let the merchants have the vaccines if it is going to be one in every thousand being sold. That is not going to do any harm to the bigger picture. I will let Ms Garvan answer those questions and then come back in.