John Perry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 184: To ask the Minister for Agriculture and Food if she will make a statement on the correspondence (details supplied). [22907/06]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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The views expressed in the correspondence referred to represent one of a range of perspectives put forward by stakeholders to my Department concerning regulation of the veterinary medicines market in Ireland. Some stakeholders would prefer a more restrictive approach to that outlined in the document while others have urged a more liberal regime.

I do not accept that the Animal Remedies Regulations which I signed into law last November in order to transpose EU Directive 2004/28 are anti-competitive. These regulations provide for a number of innovations, including a requirement for mandatory written veterinary prescriptions and identifying alternative treatments on prescriptions, designed, inter alia, to foster competition in the marketplace, thus giving farmers greater choice as to where they source their supplies of prescription medicines. I have also extended the range of retail outlets to include Licensed Merchants which can, from 1 January 2007, supply a limited range of 'prescription only' veterinary medicines on the basis of a veterinary prescription. I do not intend to modify this latter measure as proposed in the document referred to by the Deputy, as I believe that it would reduce competition, without any concomitant improvement in the protection of public or animal health and welfare.

I do, however, accept that it would be detrimental to competition in the market to confine the writing of prescriptions to veterinary practitioners in a situation where the vast majority of medicines became prescription only. I have clearly indicated on a number of occasions that, if that is the outcome of the process currently under way at EU level on the exemption criteria, I will permit persons other than veterinarians, such as pharmacists and other suitably qualified persons to prescribe some of the medicines which become prescription only from 1 January next. I should point out that my preferred option continues to be to avoid the medicines concerned coming under any form of prescription control in the first instance. In this regard, my Department is still awaiting formal proposals from the European Commission on the exemption criteria. In the interim, my Department is continuing to engage with the Commission to secure a speedy and favourable outcome to this process.