Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The target was to carry out 85,000 TSE tests on prescribed animals, and to date 48,000 have been tested. On animal health, we have learned some valuable lessons from the horsemeat issue. Safety and hygiene inspections and supervision in factories protect the reputation of our industry. If our reputation is damaged, our capacity to enter the new markets we have discussed is affected. Within our Department it would not be an exaggeration to say we are somewhat obsessed with hygiene and food safety. We need to be because when things go wrong it is as if there is a red alert in the Department due to the potential for reputational damage. That is why we have carried out 9,500 food safety and hygiene inspections. By the end of June 8,500 were done. We were supposed to do fewer than 9,500 in the full year but by the end of June we had almost reached the threshold. We will go way beyond the targets we have set for ourselves. We overdo inspections from a safety and hygiene perspective for the reputational reasons to which I referred.

In terms of the all-island strategy, animal and plant health is probably the main and most consistent feature of the North-South Ministerial Council meetings. It is constantly inching forward. There are some problems about which it is important to be up-front. We have spent a lot of money and time building the reputation of Irish beef and dairy products. We have an orange and green programme and quality assurance schemes, and a dairy sustainability assurance scheme is being rolled out. Many of these schemes are not being taken up in Northern Ireland. We have to ask what is the target. In terms of the broader politics, I want a united Ireland at some stage in the future which deals with these issues collectively as a food-producing island. In the meantime, we are working to ensure there is co-operation, collaboration and partnership around managing risk in terms of animal and plant health spread. A good example of that is how we are dealing with ash dieback disease, where there is very close co-operation. We have led on the BVD scheme; there is good partnership and it is being implemented. The North is slightly behind us, but on Johne's disease it is slightly ahead. We are working with it in order that we have the same types of scheme.

On TB, unfortunately there are differences of approach for political reasons. Our approach has been hugely successful. There is a slightly different approach in the UK but we work quite closely together. There are lots of good examples of efforts to create ease of movement of animals North and South in terms of trade and trying to manage risk in terms of disease and animal health so we can create the kind of consistency which, it is to be hoped, will allow us to have a brand around an Irish product coming from the island of Ireland. However, the risk should not be ignored in our efforts to be open to partnership with the North. The risk is that if a product is labelled as Irish but comes from Northern Ireland, and there is a problem such as dioxins, disease or whatever which compromises food safety, as the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine I have to stand over it, even thought my vets were not in the factory where the animal was slaughtered or at the processor which packaged the product. We need to have very tight protocols with Northern Ireland to ensure there are common standards, because if I am to stand over something which was produced in a different jurisdiction there are risks.

There are other issues with regard to currency, for example. If all milk in Northern Ireland is deemed to be part of the Irish milk pool on the island of Ireland and sterling weakens, there would be competitiveness issues which we could not ignore. There are similar difficulties with petrol. We have to manage the North and South in a way that focuses on partnership and working together mutually to build up a reputation for food being exported from the island. I would be open to joint trade missions, for example, but I do not want to undermine the fantastic work done by organisations such as Bord Bia to build a reputation around Irish food produced under our system, which involves controls, checks, inspections and all the rest. The industry is worried about that in the context of a broader ambition to create an island-of-Ireland approach towards food production.