Mr. Michael Sheahan:

We discussed it a bit earlier. We had the first equine census in November last year and we will have a second one in November of this year. The first time we did it, it would be fair to say it was not as successful as we would have liked because we ran into unexpected technology problems. Normally our technology in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is superb and I mention our animal identification and movement, AIM, database and our animal health surveillance. However, for one reason or another the technology let us down with people being unable to do the census online and a lot of people had to resort to paper in the end, which was a bit frustrating. We have learned a lot from that and we will be repeating the census in November 2022. The first census has been completed and the data are being worked on. It is a big step forward but we still have a bit to go.