The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has sought legal advice from the Attorney General on the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertiliser Regulation Bill.
It is understood that one of the key concerns that prompted a move to involve the Attorney General is potential data protection issues around the establishment of a national fertiliser database, which will track stocks, purchases and use of fertiliser.
The request from the department to the state’s highest law officer comes after the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine released its report on its pre-legislative scrutiny of the bill.
A spokesperson for the department said: “The department welcomes the published report from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine in respect of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feeds and Fertilisers Regulation Bill.
“At present, [the department is] awaiting advice from the Attorney General in relation to a number of matters raised during the pre-legislative process,” the spokesperson added.
Sources indicate that data protection is one of the main sticking points for which legal advice was sought.
One of the 19 observations in the committee’s report on the bill stated: “Several stakeholders expressed their concerns to the committee on how information submitted by users to the proposed national fertiliser database could be used, in particular, in deciding to carry out inspections undertaken by [the department] with regards to other schemes and the possibility of the provision of this data to third parties.
“The committee recommends that clarity is brought on these concerns by ensuring in the bill that the use and storage of data provided by users on the national fertiliser database is in line with General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR],” the report said.
The national fertiliser database is set to come into effect on January 1, 2023.
Professional fertiliser end users will upload their opening fertiliser stock figures at the beginning of the year and input their closing stock at the end of the year to account for the total fertiliser used during the calendar year.
A professional fertiliser end user is defined as any person who uses fertiliser products in the course of his or her professional activities, which includes farmers.
Any purchases made during the calendar year will be recorded at the point of sale and will feed into the fertiliser database.