William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. Michael Byrne is the person I deal with and have dealt with for over 40 years. Like other speakers, I want to say this is not a question of bashing farmers or vets. I use a vet very regularly and so does anybody involved in the business I am involved in.

On the dry cow tube one, I could do it for years without getting it. Now I get a veterinary certificate for it and I still buy them off Michael Byrne. I want to make that clear.

When you get up in the morning and have a sick animal, you make a call to the vet or whatever you do, but there is also the routine dosing and routine looking after cattle that we all do and are reared with. I do not need a vet to tell me how to do that. I remember the vet coming in several times to my late father and asking him, "Jimmy, what do you think is wrong with them?" Young vets starting off got their knowledge from farmers who knew what it was but did not have the stuff to give to the cow.

This is like the corner shop closing. This will close down another business and there is no need for it. These people give us a service we are used to. We do not have to rock up and change our clothes. We can drive in and they can come out. Before that they gave a service, as Deputy Healy-Rae said, at all the marts. I bought a load of cattle at marts and an old man would say to me, "By the way, you should dose that one." I could buy the dose and dose him straight away when I got home. That is all we want. There is nothing about ill-treatment or anything. This is just routine stuff we do to look after cattle, the same as people with small animals give them stuff for fleas or dose them. We looked after them and were used to the service we were getting. There was nothing wrong with the service. The service was not abused, either by the people dispensing the stuff or the people, like myself, buying it. There was no abuse in it. We understand a lot of the stuff needed is intramuscular. The vet will leave you a bottle of whatever. There is room for this. At the moment, we are talking about a €400 million industry which is €300 million at the veterinary end and €100 million for everybody else dispensing it. I got and continue to get a great service. I would like that service to continue.

As a practising farmer, I have never been forced into buying this or thought I had to buy that. I buy where I think I get the best product and then I argue on the value, the very same as everybody else. I will not be pushed into co-ops or anything like that. I will do the business I think best. Mostly, whether you are buying meal or anything else, you build a relationship with a person, trust the person and they give you the service you need. I would like somebody to tell me why they went down the road of changing something that was working. There was no abuse of it. This is like going into a supermarket and you will not be able to get Aspro, Anadin, shampoo or anything like that.