Dr. Sonja Egan:

Yes, absolutely. I thank Deputy Kehoe for his question. On the SNP testing and a lead-in to the transition, last year we completed what essentially was the building up of a reference library so that we could have these foals' parentage tested against their sires and their dams. In essence, this meant was that across the stud books that we engaged, we tested up to 10,000 animals so that they could be included on the SNP reference library.

That then would be the lead for future years. A policy changes applied early this year to DNA testing. The project was adapted, which meant that the SNP testing was applied live to foals and was also applied to the adults to mitigate any additional costs to the breeder. This, effectively, means that the SNP foal is tested at 30% cost to the breeder and is 70% funded by the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine. If the adults needed an SNP test, they were tested at 100% of the cost by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Some of the changes which we brought in to support the breeders at the start of the year, and in collaboration with our lab partners and our other stud books, were to try, essentially, to get ahead of the foals which we knew were coming. Not all of the stud books have these policies and procedures in place due to their own stud book rules. Certainly, we moved to test, for example, by collecting hair samples when we are out at events or if we knew that these animals were not already captured and were coming in. We captured those initial 10,000 animals by taking, as Mr Duggan referred to, the most active animals in the breeding herd. These were the top sires and dams which have been producing over approximately the past three years. We also went out to our stud book inspections to such animals which had been using some of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's schemes specifically for breeding, which we also tested.