14 / DAFM
The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine outlines the steps required to become an authorised issuer of plant passports
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s a professional operator you play a key role in protectinag Ireland’s plant health status and biodiversity. The detection of harmful plant pests protects your own business and protects the wider agriculture and horticulture sectors. As you are aware, all plants for planting require a plant passport when moved from one professional operator to another professional operator. Additionally, protected zone host plants require plant passports to the end user and all plants sold online require plant passports to the final/end user. A protected zone is a zone in the Community in which one or more quarantine organisms are present in the Union territory but are absent from specific parts of the territory despite favourable conditions for them to establish themselves there. A plant passport is an important record as it attests to the plant health condition and verifies traceability of the plants. Plant passports can only be issued by professional operators who are authorised to do so by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM). To that end, a new authorisation
ASSESSMENT OF COMPETENCY TO ISSUE PLANT PASSPORTS process has been introduced which includes an online training course and assessment followed by an on-site inspection by DAFM. The process is quite simple to complete and will run as follows: 1. You are invited to view the training modules via the link to our website available at https://www.gov.ie/en/ publication/8e660-plant-passports 2. You are then asked to answer multiple choice questions on the content of the training modules. The assessment is available on the EU Survey website at https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/ auth_professional_assessment. The pass mark is 80% and the result will be generated automatically. There is no limit on the number of attempts to complete the assessment so if you miss something the first time you can complete again. 3. Upon successful completion of the course, confirmation of the result will be issued by email. Full name, full email address and the Plant Health Registration number
of the Professional Operator will be required to complete the training. 4. You then need to complete an application form to be authorised to issue plant passports and return to DAFM together with a copy of the confirmation email referred to at point 3. 5. A DAFM inspector will conduct an on-site assessment to confirm that the operator has the necessary equipment and facilities to perform examinations and the capacity to carry out the measures necessary to prevent the presence and spread of harmful pests. 6. If the inspection stage is successful, a certificate of authorisation to issue plant passports will be provided. The assessment process should be complete and submitted to DAFM by 5pm on 30th April 2021. If you have any queries in relation to the above, please contact us by email at plantandpests@agriculture.gov.ie or phone at (01) 5058885. ✽
Spring 2021 / www.horticultureconnected.ie / HORTICULTURECONNECTED
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