John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. O'Driscoll and his officials. I will go back to the case that was raised earlier concerning Tom Galvin in 2002. I am dealing with the case. Mr. O’Driscoll made a couple of points in response to Deputy McDonald. He was asked if a similar situation occurred again whether he would act and conduct affairs in a similar way. He suggested that he would probably not do that but one never knows. That is significant.

Mr. O’Driscoll said the Veterinary Council vets were exonerated. That is fair enough too. It is a serious body of people. That does not mean that things that happened were not done properly. The fact that the vets were exonerated means they did not do anything wrong, but that does not mean things should have happened the way they did. Locally, Tom Galvin is someone who is very well regarded. The feeling locally is that the Department treated him poorly. How a Department deals with issues is subjective. Mr. O’Driscoll mentioned the risks and the threat when it comes to moving animals, whether they should be moved and general issues relating to disease, but there is also the question of treating someone fairly. My subjective view having looked at the evidence is that he was treated poorly, regardless of the constraints the Department’s officials might have been under when it comes to the rules and regulations dealing with animals suspected of being diseased or being allegedly fed things that would affect the food chain adversely.

The case has been in court for the past 13 years. I suggest that we should deal with the issue in a non-adversarial manner. I will deal with the facts as they occurred 13 years ago. Mr. Galvin deserves that. It might be the first time to deal with matters on that basis. Perhaps Mr. O’Driscoll could paint the picture of when the Department officials first entered the farm and the reasons they did so. As Mr. O’Driscoll starts to paint the picture, I will ask him some questions along the way about testing, decisions made once the alleged carcinogen was detected, and the events that ensued following that.