Dr. Sonja Egan:

I understand. There are a number of reasons under the SNP testing programme for which that may have happened. I cannot speak to a specific case but some of the examples include having received a foal for SNP testing, and the sire and dam might not be on the SNP testing platform. In order to do that, once we receive that application, while I do not know the specifics of that case, we send a request to the individual for a sample from the dam. We will also have tried to request a sample from the sire. I will give an example from one of our stud books. Some 500 new sires enter the breeding programme every year, some of which are outside Ireland. We need to try to get samples from those stallions too, which can be a challenge. If a sample fails, our laboratory partner sends it through the testing platform a second time. We estimate that it takes 15 days to go through the first time. If it is sent a second time, that takes another 15 days, so that is 30 days in total. Our partner then notifies us that perhaps the sample is not working and we write to the breeders to ask them to re-sample. There are several cases where there are delays. As we have mentioned, the transition from microsatellites to SNP has not helped this.