Mr. Colm Forde:

I will elaborate a little on Mr. Ryan's point. One of the key fundamentals of a national farmed animal health strategy is that prevention is better than a cure. Senator Paul Daly asked how we can help more farmers prevent TB instances in their herds. It has been a constant criticism of the programme over many decades. Providing additional information to herd owners to help them inform their own risk is a fundamental part of the programme. We have also commissioned the ESRI to do a behavioural study on how we can influence farmers to help them make positive behaviour changes to reduce risk. We have all seen with Covid the different changes we are asked to make to try to limit disease transmission. The concepts are quite similar.

To answer Deputy Fitzmaurice's specific question, the on-farm market valuation system we have in place allows for a live valuation on a farm of a reactor animal, which is carried out by an independent valuer. At that point the herd owner or the Department can appeal the valuation and ask for a second valuation. I do not have the most recent statistics to hand but the last time I looked, 97% of first valuations were accepted by herd owners. By any fair measure that would indicate a broad level of positive acceptance of the scheme by farmers.