Dr. Gary Kearney:

In respect of horsemeat, we are all aware that the agrifood business is the biggest indigenous industry on the island, employing just under 275,000 people. Food safety is a key factor underpinning the reputation and sustainability of the industry. Since the horsemeat scandal broke, many people have done a lot of work to introduce new checks and balances. The regulatory agencies in both jurisdictions have put in place systems, committees and groupings to study and trying to scan the horizon and come up with a plan for potential issues in the food chain or food commodities. The Food Standards Agency, for example, has set up a crime unit, which is quite heavily staffed, to reassure consumers that everything is being done and that a dishonest approach within the food chain will not be accepted.

The European Food Safety Authority has pulled all 28 member states together in a major grouping as an initiative to examine what they can do collectively in addition to what they are doing individually to ensure that traceability along the food chain can be optimised. The food chain is extremely complex. The horsemeat scandal showed that. It takes quite a long time to break down what each member state is doing by way of systems, controls, approaches and resources applied. The scandal showed that potential vulnerabilities need to be shored up. It may not have been a food safety, food quality or consumer issue, but it showed us that maybe not everything is right. Food safety is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week, forever-and-ever concern. People need to consume food and food is always produced, and we need to be on top of the game all the time. It is not a question of putting a control in place and assuming everything will go correctly. A great deal of effort has been put into that. We have discussed with various stakeholders, including regulators, how safefood can assist in that type of approach. Someone mentioned a neutral space, but we have to be careful because we are not a regulator; we promote food safety across the food chain. It is not our role to audit traceability. We already have very good regulatory agencies to do that.

Professor Elliott has outlined an informal approach in which industry players can come together and share information and pick up trends before they become a problem in terms of food safety further down the food chain. Over the past few years we have established an initiative called knowledge networks. These are collaborative frameworks linking those who work in food safety, or have a responsibility in that area, in academia, including universities and institutes of technology, in industry and in food or food-related agencies, including regulators, across the island. The role of those networks is to identify new risks, especially emerging challenges - to gaze into a crystal ball and examine various areas and try to ask the hard questions such as what happens if the controls do not work in one place or we do not have enough information in another.

We have seven networks. They are built around scientific issues of particular interest - for example, campylobacter in chicken - and we have more than 2,700 members. These are food safety professionals, with 20% coming from industry. We have held approximately 38 events and conferences over the last three to four years and had attendances of 2,200 people within the food chain. People are coming together and identifying issues, especially new risks, that are coming down the track.

We held a very good function at the end of last year with Teagasc. One of our facilitators who runs the campylobacter network, Dr. Declan Bolton from Teagasc, brought in the experts from those countries in Scandinavia that have resolved the campylobacter issue to greater effect than most of the rest of Europe, to learn the tips and tricks they used and how best we can apply what they applied to our situation on the island. We use forums such as those. It is quite robust. There are newsletters and other support mechanisms to try to get people to talk and exchange information on a North-South basis. The industry is an all-island endeavour. It is about building relationships and trust so that information can be shared formally and informally.

The last issue the Deputy mentioned was the enteric reference service. As Mr. Dolan mentioned, I was at the coalface on that. It is in our legislation and we have made a number of efforts to get it over the line. It is a very complex issue. It is not that we are losing money by not having such a service, but the key problem for us, and the reason it was put into our legislation, is the "what if" issue. If there was an outbreak of a major food problem in the Republic of Ireland, how would we get on? There are two centres in the Republic, in Galway and Dublin, that carry out enteric services to a very high standard. The funding streams are not always guaranteed. Even though they do fantastic work, they need a greater guarantee or reassurance regarding funding and resources. In Northern Ireland, the first call is to Colindale. If there was a serious outbreak that swamped us in the Republic, we would use Colindale, but if it affected Northern Ireland there might be a delay in that respect.

As I said, it has been a very complex situation with many stakeholders and many priorities. We had taken the process to a costing stage, where we identified a number of solutions. At that point, two or three years ago, economic circumstances were unfavourable and we were asked to hold off until they were more favourable. We are going to take a fresh look at it. We know the issues and the people. They have not changed. The solutions we had in mind that we intended to cost have not changed. We had a very good consultation with stakeholders across the island, so we have a good understanding of what people think and of what will work. It is a case of moving onward on that process. We hope that over the next year we will have fresh progress in that area.