Data protection concerns could hold up the passing of a bill to establish a national database of veterinary prescriptions, according to Senator Tim Lombard.

The veterinary medicinal products, medicated feeds and fertilisers regulation bill will require all animal prescriptions to be registered with the Department of Agriculture.

Information contained in the database will be shared with Bord Bia for the purposes of quality assurance inspections, if the bill passes in its current form.

Other bodies with which farmer information could be shared are the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the Health Products Regulatory Authority.

“There is potentially a huge issue here and it needs to be clarified. The Data Protection Commission must be involved. It has strong powers to intervene in these cases.

There are two concerns – is it appropriate and is it legal?” Lombard told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“I would be concerned about the due diligence. The clock is ticking on this and if it is not passed by December, there could be implications for farm schemes.”

The same bill will establish a national fertiliser database which will be used to monitor compliance with CAP schemes.

The IFA raised concerns on using farmer data to flag herds for inspections and alleged that milk and meat processors could request information which could potentially be used to “devalue animals” on the basis of a farm’s medicines usage.

“We have insisted that the Department should be the only ones able to access the data,” IFA animal health chair TJ Maher told the Irish Farmers Journal. The Department is understood to believe the database is GDPR compliant.