Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to comment on the issue of consumer protection and the regulations in place in that regard.

Last week a person was found to have transgressed the rules governing growth promoters and banned substances. I congratulate the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on catching that person out and the full rigours of the law should be brought to bear on him. Such behaviour does serious damage to our reputation and persons engaged in such activity should have no mercy shown to them. They can do serious damage to our economy. We can argue here about different aspects of policy but people engaged in that kind of activity should be given no quarter. I hope that the full rigours of the law are brought to bear in this case.

On bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD, and the eradication scheme, I cannot understand how some herd owners have been allowed to keep positive animals on their farms. We had a three year programme for BVD but it does not look like we will fully eradicate the disease in that timeframe. The fact that people have been allowed to hold positive animals and have not been forced to dispose of them makes a mockery of the scheme. It is also very annoying for their neighbours. Unfortunately, in this, the third year of the scheme, people are reporting BVD positive animals for the first time and that should not be happening. If we are going to have a disease eradication scheme operating through Animal Health Ireland we need strict regulations and must insist that if animals are positive, they must be taken out of the system. It defeats the purpose of the scheme if herd owners are allowed to keep positive animals which are a source of disease. A lot of money has been spent on controlling BVD but the failure to eradicate it is undermining farmers' confidence about entering any future schemes. If Animal Health Ireland is to embark on another pilot programme, farmers must have confidence in it. The retention of positive animals on farms is ridiculous.

On the TB figures, it is great to see the reduction in the number of TB reactors. The programme that was undertaken a number of years ago to control the badger population and limit the spread of TB through wild life has yielded positive results in terms of the reduction in the TB reactor numbers. However, in County Wicklow there is a serious problem with the deer population, which is running rampant. Some farmers have even changed their farming practices because they find it impossible to keep bovines now, due to the permanent restrictions on them because of TB as well as the cost of keeping animals over the winter. We must face up to this serious issue. Deer can travel long distances and are very hard to contain. The size of the deer population in Wicklow must be taken seriously because it is indisputable that deer are infected with TB. How the deer population became infected - whether it was through badgers or some other means - is immaterial to farmers. The fact is that the deer population is infected, the herd is growing and the problem must be tackled. If we do not deal with it in Wicklow, it will spread to other parts of the country. We must keep the deer population at a realistic level and if deer are causing a TB problem for farmers then a programme similar to the one for badgers must be put in place. It has worked with badgers but the issue with deer has not yet been tackled. It is a problem that we cannot ignore any longer.