Mr. Terence O'Shea:

I will come back in on that point but would like to continue with the point I was making to Senator Daly. The sector that we represent, unlike Mr. Doyle, who represents ICOS, are village and small town merchants. Around 20% of their turnover is veterinary medicines but that is also around 20% of their profit. If they are forced to exit the industry due to the technicalities in the statutory instrument, their ability to generate profit drops by 20% but their insurance and their light and heat bills do not drop by 20%. Ultimately, what will happen is that the number of people supplying veterinary medicines will reduce. We believe our sector will drop to around 50 and the majority of the merchants may end up closing. These are the merchants that are available on Saturday night and are open on Sundays to supply all of the farm needs. All of us are from rural Ireland and if one travels through the villages and towns in rural Ireland, the priest is gone, the Garda station is gone, the phone box is gone, as is the pub, coffee shop and restaurant. Now we have a statutory instrument that will ultimately force the merchant out. It is very important to stress that this is not by intent but whether by accident or whatever way it has turned out, this is the outcome. We have impressed our message for almost five years on the officials in the Department of agriculture. They are quite aware of the subtle changes that need to be made to ensure that a small amount of our sector and our members remain viable and continue supplying services to more than 125,000 farming enterprises. If we end up with less than 50 merchants, that is one for every 3,500 farming enterprises in Ireland. It does not make sense.