A legal opinion from the Attorney General has torpedoed plans for a controversial new regime to control the sale of animal health medicines.

The legal view has also scuppered the proposed introduction of a national centralised database for fertiliser sales.

Proposals that merchant staff deemed to be ‘Responsible Persons’ might be allowed to prescribe certain veterinary medicines such as doses and wormers were not supported by the Attorney General, the Irish Farmers Journal understands.

As a consequence of the legal opinion, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue, has accepted that the Veterinary Medicinal Products Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill will not make it through the Dáil.

Last week, the Department announced an extension to the current guidelines for the dispensing of doses and wormers, after it conceded that the proposed introduction date of 1 December for the new regime could not be met.

However, the intervention of the Attorney General has left the legislative process in limbo.

The Department’s plans to introduce a computerised national database for fertiliser sales from 1 January has also been derailed by the decision to delay the Veterinary Medicinal Products Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill.

The Department will now seek to implement a paper-based system instead from 1 January, but this may be subject to the agreement of the merchants and farm organisations.

Any paper-based system would be similar to that used in slurry movements, whereby farmers upload their documents to the Department’s portal. It is anticipated that the paper system could be in place until 1 February.

The national register is an attempt to quantify and regulate actual fertiliser usage on a farm-by-farm basis. It tallies with the ambition to reduce overall fertiliser usage as part of agriculture’s climate change measures.

However, serious concerns have been expressed by both farmers and merchants regarding the fertiliser proposals.

They claim it would be extremely difficult to trace fertiliser purchases from Northern Ireland unless imported stocks were identified by cross-compliances inspections.