Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

No. That is a very fair question. There will be authorised officers who will be able to enter premises to conduct investigations if there has been a complaint. The idea that we would be authorising officers to enter a public premises would legally mean we would be authorising officers to enter our own premises. The advice was that there would be an unnecessary legal conflict considering that all the codes of practice and obligations for inspection and obeying the rules are in place in public buildings and my Department in any case. One could have taken the contrary view and stated authorised officers should also be able to investigate departmental offices or departmental veterinary offices. However, given that all the legal obligations that exist have to be enforced by my Department and our inspectors in any case, having a double inspection process did not seem to make much sense. If Deputies have concerns about this, I can deal with them when discussing the legislation in the Seanad in a few weeks.

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