The Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mary Coughlan, has said that the existing regulations for prescribing veterinary medicines will remain in place until 2007.
Irish farmers have been angered by proposed new rules that would require prescriptions for all medicines for food-producing animals.
However, the minister said the EU has not yet decided what categories of medicines might be excluded from the new requirement.
The EU has until January 2007 to decide on the exemption criteria and the minister said that pending this decision existing national prescription arrangements can remain in place.
In effect, this means that the regulations will not require any current medicines to be made subject to prescription and farmers can continue for the time being to get such medicines on the same basis as at present.
As regards intramammaries, Ms Coughlan said that it is clear that there is no prospect of intramammaries that contain antibiotics qualifying for exemption at EU level, and consequently such medicines will have to become subject to prescription.
This new deadline will also allow further time to finalise arrangements for prescriptions to be written in the context of mastitis control programmes implemented by co-ops.
