Ms Fionnuala Tyrell:

I thank the Chair. We take our submission to the committee as read. A lot of the points we made have been touched on here but we would like to quickly summarise the feelings of our members. As has already been stated, bovine TB eradication has been with us for almost 70 years. We are not making the progress that has been made in other countries. The feelings of a lot of our members who live in areas which would be considered hill farms and are close to forestry and to national park areas is that the problem of the contribution of wild deer to the spread of bovine TB is not being taken seriously enough. Most of the emphasis seems to be on the badger. I come from a hill farm in west Wicklow and have been through what any family goes through when TB hits, and hits repeatedly, on their farm. You would not wish it on your worst enemy. It causes so much upset. As has already been touched on, the compensation available does not really compensate. Yes, you will get the price on the day for your animal; that is the guaranteed valuation. That animal goes to the factory and you get a paltry sum back. Factories get away with paying a paltry sum because they know that the taxpayer, the Exchequer, will pick up the tab for the rest of the valuation. That valuation does not take into account the young cow you have lost and what her potential earnings for the farm would have been. It does not take into account that farming is a business and you must have a cash flow and that everybody's cash flow and breeding programmes are put out of sync. We are appealing to every organisation that has anything to do with TB eradication, and any State body, that we get together and everybody works together for the good of all. We need to get this disease gone.

The wild deer herd needs to be managed by properly trained and experienced gamekeepers. This will spread. In 2003 in Donegal there was an escape of deer from Glenveagh National Park. I have spoken to some of our members in Donegal and areas around there and over the 19 years since then, the deer have spread right down. There are now reports of them in County Leitrim, they are in County Sligo and I heard about a stag that was seen in Ballaghaderreen recently, which is not where they would usually be. I know that in the area we live in, in west Wicklow, deer were only seen in the distance 20 years ago and on certain roads you might have needed to be careful at night. Now you can turn a corner in the middle of the day now and meet 20 deer. This is spreading. They are in Kildare now and as they are moving throughout the country, what is a problem at the moment for hill farmers and those in the areas that have forestry will spread to other areas of the country. We have fenced out the deer in my farm and it has solved our problem. But it is not solving the problem for everybody else. If we all put up fences it will just pass the problem further down the line. We need to fence these animals into sanctuaries, into areas, and they will not be as diseased if they are properly managed. The highlands of Scotland have gamekeepers and the weak and sick deer that will spread the disease are taken out.

We blame the badger. In most farms one cannot allow cattle to drink out of streams. One puts troughs up at a high enough point that the badger cannot touch it but the deer can. It is not fast-flowing water in a trough and they leave spores, which are passed on. All these things have to be looked at, we have to be serious and for every farmer who has a concern about whatever type of wildlife is in his or her area, the matter must be explored properly and everybody must work together. Nobody wants to point the finger but the deer herd needs to be managed. Fencing them out of farms is one solution but it is not the whole solution. I thank the Chair.