Mr. Lorcan McCabe:

I thank the Chairman. Our objective, as the committee knows, is to get rid of TB as quickly as possible and our submission is on the record. There are a couple of things I want to highlight on that. The main one, as the committee has heard from everyone before, is the wildlife problem. The badgers are obviously a problem and it is under-resourced. As late as yesterday I was talking to people with TB in their herd in the southern part of the country. They were saying they had no personnel for the last two years and it created havoc with wildlife. For a start, the wildlife is considered to be one of the biggest problems. It is completely under-resourced. There need to be many more feet on the ground to sort that out.

Moving on to other things, the new animal health law suggested we bring in the pre- and post-movement testing of animals that have been out of test within six months. We have continuously pushed forward that it be the pre-movement test only because it will be very difficult to police the other. A policy we in the ICMSA have pushed for a long time relates to inconclusives. Going back to 2019, there have been over 2,000 inconclusives in the country every year with 12% to 13% of them going down subsequently. I am glad that as of last year all inconclusives are under a strict regime of testing. It is now showing up that two out of three inconclusives are subsequently failing on the blood test and subsequent testing. We have continuously looked for a programme to be put in place so that historical inconclusives - there are approximately 4,000 of them - are taken out at full market valuation because there is no doubt they will turn up problems as we go forward.

The other thing that is very critical is communication. We have heard constantly from the Department about this new communication programme called the CRM, or client relation management, that is to be up and running. Under it, anyone with TB can, in one phone call, have everything explained to them as to what happens. This is not the case on the ground. It absolutely is not. It is irrelevant whether people lose two, 50 or 100 cows because for them, these are animals they care for going down. They are under stress starting off. They want a phone number to ring to find out about valuation, all the forms they must fill in and everything that must be done. That is not there. If we want farmers on side the Department needs to have a direct line people can ring with everything they need. Going back to the badgers and catching, snaring and vaccinating them, you must get farmers on your side first. If farmers are in the dark they are not aware of what is happening and where to go. The communication is one thing we have been promised and it has fallen down very badly.

The compensation scheme is probably going 20 years now and there are a couple of issues. The income supplement was set at €55 probably 20-odd years ago and with costs, etc., it is completely outdated. In our submission we have set it at a minimum of €90. We have heard from people who have lost cows. Their income is way down. I have people screaming at me on the phone that their income is way down. Everything is there in our submission.

Going back to financing, the wildlife programme for 2019 was €4.5 million. That needs to be upped much more and as I said before, we need feet on the ground to sort it out. In some areas you have fantastic officers on the ground who work hard at it. In other areas it is not that they do not do a good job but that they are just not there. We need an update on that.

On research, only something like €2 million is spent on research every year. Scientific research is the way we must go. That research must be updated. Recently there is genomic sequencing and it has huge potential in tracing where TB has come from. In other words, if I bought an animal off Mr. Smyth, they would be able to trace it back to wherever it came from and we will knock that out in the end.

We have a couple of other points there. We believe there should be a loan scheme for people who have been held up with TB because it can be catastrophic. One other quick thing. With Covid in the past two years, there was a relaxing of the regulation regarding calves such that you can sell them up to 120 days. Our friends in the Department have at all stages said it has not impacted on TB whatsoever so we will be hoping that rule could be reapplied. It has not since last September. I will be willing to take any questions. Our objective is that there will be no TB and so no need for compensation.