Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

I thank the Senator. I will answer his questions but regarding the costs, the quickest way to reduce the cost to the Exchequer is to drive down disease levels. As the Senator said, the biggest driver of compensation is the number of reactor animals. In the choices referred to in terms of going forward, they are targeting reducing disease levels, which will impact not just the cost to the Exchequer but, as the Senator said, the economic impact to rural economies and the emotional impact our staff on the ground see every day when they are dealing with farmers unfortunate enough to have a TB breakdown.

Regarding the choices or what will be contained in this plan, the Minister has engaged significantly with farming organisations in recent weeks, including significant face-to-face engagement. He listened to feedback from the farmer organisations and other stakeholders on those days and he is now reflecting on considering how to move forward with proposals. While those considerations are still ongoing, it is fair to say the concentration of the measures will include supporting farmers free of TB to continue to be free of TB, supporting on-farm biosecurity actions and behaviours farmers can engage in and allowing them to see a path outwards for herds currently restricted. There is also a need to look again at how we use TB testing on farms to target residual infection, because we are seeing these residual infections, essentially left over after a test, crop up in future repeated breakdowns. How this manifests itself in terms of on-farm controls and the specifics of it are issues still being considered by the Minister. These are, however, the key areas. Essentially, this is about ensuring farmers are not put in a position where they go out to buy animals and inadvertently, through no fault of their own, buy in an animal considered to be at a higher risk of introducing TB than others.