Chairman:

We will resume in public session. We are dealing with testing associated with the bovine TB eradication programme. I remind members, witnesses and those in the Gallery to turn off their mobile phones as they interfere with the sound system. I welcome the witnesses from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Dr. Margaret Good is a senior superintendent veterinary inspector and she will brief the committee on testing in this country for the bovine TB eradication programme. I thank her for attending the committee meeting today. Accompanying Dr. Good is Mr. Pat Meskell, senior superintendent veterinary inspector, Mr. Tom McTague, senior superintendent veterinary inspector, and Mr. Anthony Duignan, superintendent veterinary inspector.

I draw the attention of the witnesses to the fact that, by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. Witnesses are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. I invite Dr. Good to make her opening statement.

Dr. Margaret Good:

Thank you, Chairman. A number of questions were raised on the bovine TB eradication programme at the meeting of this committee on 25 October looking for clarity in some areas in respect of testing. Unlike perhaps in engineering, there is no test in medicine whereby there can be 100% accuracy all of the time so it is good to try to aim for clarity.

Bovine TB is a disease caused by a living organism, Mycobacterium bovis,which affects living animals and while there are two biological entities going on, there is not 100% certainty. There are a variety of reasons for that such as the differences in the strain of the mycobacteria that are affecting the animal or even the number of bugs that got in and invaded the animal, the animal's own immune ability and the animal's genetics.

However, the Minister’s veterinary inspectors working on this disease use their veterinary training and epidemiological skills as the basis for decision making. Let us look at the tests we use for the bovine TB eradication programme. Fundamentally, we have two basic tests. We have a skin test and a blood test and I will cover both. The tuberculin skin test has been around for more than 100 years. Farmers among the committee members will know it is bothersome. It requires two visits, the cattle have to be assembled and put through the crush and handling facilities, they have to restrained twice, once for clipping, measuring and injection and then again 72 hours later for palpation of the lumps, measurement of them and assessment of them.

It is a somewhat subjective test with a degree of inter-operator variability in test performance and can be subject to human error. Nevertheless, despite repeated attempts to find a better test - a laboratory test would be much desired - we have had many false hopes but we have not yet found a better test. The skin test, in all of its forms, is still the most widely used field surveillance test for the detection of cattle with TB worldwide. The same is true in humans where they use a variation of exactly the same tests as we use.

In Ireland we have many environmental mycobacteria and other diseases which can interfere with the test. They cause cross reactions and can give rise to false positives and false negatives. To minimise the impact of the environmental mycobacteria we use the most specific of the skin tests. I will come back to what I mean by that. We use the single intradermal comparative tuberculin test, SICTT, where two injections of tuberculins, purified protein derivatives, one from M.bovis, which is what causes TB, and the other one from M.avium, which is a close relation but does not cause TB in cattle. That is to knock out the cross reaction. The injections are into the mid-neck region in cattle and the response to both injections is compared 72 hours later. Since the injections are just protein they cannot cause disease and because they are sterile they will not cause any other reactions unless the animal has met the TB organism and been sensitised, or alas, one of the cross-reacting ones also might sensitise. From here on I will call that the skin test.

We also have a blood test so when we compare tests we use terms such as test sensitivity, which is the ability of a test to correctly identify infected animals. The sensitivity of the skin test in this country has a sensitivity of approximately 85%. When we are in an infected herd we can improve the sensitivity by applying a severe interpretation to the test. Repeating the test multiple times also improves sensitivity. We also talk about test specificity, which is the ability of a test to correctly identify non-infected animals. I said that the test we use is the most specific. Our test specificity is almost 100%. It is perhaps 99.9%. We only had 0.2% of animals positive to the skin test in 2015. That tells us that the number of false positives we have has to be very low. We carry out approximately 8 million tests every year and we do get some, which is still an area of concern.

The next thing we refer to when we talk about tests is the positive predictive value, PPV. That is the odds that a positive test correctly identifies an infected animal. It is directly related to disease prevalence in that if one is in a population with a high disease prevalence, one will have a very high probability, whereas, if one is in a population with a very low disease prevalence, conversely, one will have a lower probability. As our disease prevalence falls, the risk of having false positives, the positive predictive value being low, will get higher the nearer we get to being truly TB free. We are not there yet but we can look forward to that time. In summary, on the tests, the skin test accurately performed under ideal conditions is an extremely accurate test. The number of false positives to the test use in Ireland should be low. The ability of the test to detect infected animals is good and it is improved by changing the interpretation when we are in an infected herd and repeating the tests.

Nevertheless, a proportion of infected animals can remain undetected even over multiple tests. We know that the conditions under which cattle are tested are often less than ideal, to which I am sure a number of members can attest, and that any tests performed by humans can be the subject of human error. To improve the detection of infected animals and remove them from a herd before they become reactor in a subsequent test, turn up with lesions at slaughter or spread TB to their herd mates, we also carry use a blood test known as interferon-gamma assay. We use this within eight hours of sampling. The skin and blood tests measure the same principle in the animal. The cell mediated response measures it in the live animal beside the crush by injection and the other examines the same reagents and the response in the blood in the laboratory. There should be a high degree of correlation between both tests. We need live cells in the laboratory to perform the interferon-gamma assay test and so for maximum sensitivity, we start the assay within eight hours of collection of the sample. This is challenging logistically. All the samples are tested in one laboratory to ensure consistency of assay. In other words, getting the samples taken on farm and to the laboratory so that the assay can start within eight hours can be challenging. We have two laboratories in the country that carry out the initial stage of the assay, which has helped to alleviate some of the logistical challenges.

The specificity of the skin test is almost 100% but the specificity of the interferon gamma assay is only around 97%, which in the context of 8 million tests, is low specificity. It is not suitable to replace the skin test as a screening test because that is much higher. The sensitivity when the test is carried out at eight hours is much the same as in the skin test. The benefit of doing this is that at any one time there is a small proportion of animals that will only be positive to one or other of the tests. To maximise the detection of all infected animals, we do both tests together and we get the totality or almost the totality. When we run the two tests together, the combined tests have a sensitivity of about 93%, which is a good improvement on 85%. To ensure that we maximise the positive predictive value of the test, we only use it when we have already detected TB in a herd. We use it in herds in which four or more reactors have been identified on the skin test, which animals were not bought in but acquired the disease in the herd such that there may be other animals that were in the herd that were exposed and infected. The veterinary inspector in the local office will have evaluated the epidemiological evidence of active TB and identified the cohort animals to which they have been co-exposed with the reactors already detected and so they are the animals that we reckon are at higher risk of infection.

In summary, using both tests together - the skin and eight hour gamma tests - concentrating on infected herds and on the high-risk cohorts of potentially infected animals, reduces the proportion of infected animals that might remain undetected turning up later at subsequent tests or become latent and lie dormant and either be detected later at slaughter, in which case they may restrict the herd again, which is very frustrating for a lot of farmers, or worse, cause a re-occurrence of infection and potentially spread TB again within the herd and cause another outbreak in animals or even humans. They are the two basic tests that we use. Since both tests measure the same response and should be well correlated, we have looked at using the blood tests as part of our quality assurance assay. Over the years, we have had various quality control and quality assurance measures in the programme to try to improve the quality of it. We maintain a monitor of every aspect and take steps where we can to improve the quality of the skin testing. For example, we have measures to check that the testing facilities are adequate to allow the animals to be tested accurately and safely and to ensure there is consistent injection site accuracy. We train people to do this and we also carry out quality control checks to ensure that on reading day the reactions are assessed and measured properly, with a view to more accurately identifying TB infected animals.

As a quality control, the quality assurance checks we have trialled using the blood test collected after the reactors have been disclosed. We use a 24-hour test so we can post the samples. These are animals that have been already tested and it is a quality assurance so we can afford to lose some of the sensitivity on it. The first full year of operation of the quality assurance blood test was 2015. We had 92% of the standard reactors and 72% of the standard inconclusive reactors that also failed the blood test, such that there was very good concurrence between it. When the level of agreement between the tests falls significantly below 80% to 85%, the veterinary inspector will visit the herd, if he or she has not already done so, to assess the skin reactors, examine the nature of a lump and the regressions and whether the animals have been on any medications or had any vaccinations that might have interfered with the test. The inspector will also then carry out a repeat blood test, which is usually done within eight hours, to see if there have been any mistakes. The aim is to avoid the taking of uninfected productive animals from herds unnecessarily. There is no bona fide farmer who wants to lose more animals than he or she needs to lose in order for a herd to be tested clear again.

For now, because of the greater familiarity with the skin test, the gamma assay as a quality assurance measure is still viewed with a degree of suspicion. We have the same goal ultimately in mind, which is to rid a herd of infection and to restore it to officially free status as soon as possible. To date, in exceptional cases where the quality assurance gamma has indicated that the animals are not TB infected and we have taken a decision to leave them in situand retest them after six weeks none have subsequently failed the skin test or confirmed as infected with TB. Undoubtedly, some day some will but to date none have. We are cautious about that. As I said, our goal is to get the herd TB free.

Chairman:

I thank Dr. Good for her very comprehensive explanation of the process.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the delegation which has brought clarity to an issue that has faced Irish agriculture for 70 or 80 years. At a meeting a couple of weeks ago representatives from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine expressed the wish that we would be TB free by 2030, which will be a significant challenge for the veterinary and farming sectors in Ireland taking account of the wildlife aspect, such as deer and badgers, in many locations such as Wicklow. We face many challenges in terms of trying to make Ireland TB-free. This follows on from the attempts in recent years to make Ireland brucellosis free, which was done on the back of an exact blood test.

This project will be a little different given the wildlife aspect. Will Dr. Good touch on how we will deal with the wildlife aspect when we deal with TB in future? It is an issue the agricultural community is greatly concerned about in key locations, particularly with regard to forestry, deer and badgers. To some degree, Dr. Good has brought clarity to the infamous blood test issue. I thought there was a 24 hour and a 12 hour test. How the blood tests intermingle with the skin test is an issue. The issue of high sensitivity if there is a reactor in a locality needs to be addressed. Does every district veterinary office have its own view on this or is there one view from the Department on how we as a nation deal with sensitivity tests? Farmers, and neighbouring farmers in some locations, being under the scrutiny of high sensitivity tests is an issue that might have to be looked at.

Every year there are 8 million skin tests, which is an amazing figure. When it comes to blood testing the reactor, do we go through a process of doing a 24 hour test first and then an eight hour test or do we go straight to the eight hour test? There are two laboratories in Ireland. Does Dr. Good believe this is sufficient? Will we be able to work through the system? Does she see the blood test being the key element in the 2020 strategy and having Ireland TB free?

An issue raised by farmers is the movement of animals from restricted herds. Is Dr. Good happy with the time it takes to do the blood test and paperwork and get the reactor to a factory? Is Dr. Good happy this time is tight enough when it comes to infected animals? Does she believe more work can be done to reduce this time so it takes less than ten days? In some locations it could drag out to more than three weeks.

I have never met Dr. Good but from what I have heard in Cork she is well able and efficient.

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Dr. Good for her presentation. Unlike Senator Lombard I have come across her. We must recognise we have significantly reduced the levels of TB. We are now at a juncture to take the next step to reduce it even more, but this will be very difficult. Take the example of Wicklow and the huge incidence of TB there. Some farmers have stopped keeping bovines in west Wicklow because they could not get a clear status. Suckler farmers had to try to sell off their young stock at the back end of the year and they found they were never clear of TB.

We have instances of TB in farm animals but there are also instances of it in wildlife. There was a bad outbreak near me in the past six weeks. Testing badgers is not automatic in a TB blackspot area. When there is a outbreak we must analyse its cause. In areas with a serious outbreak, where 80% or 85% of herds go down with TB, there must be automatic testing of badgers, and of deer if they are present. Unfortunately, deer have the ability to travel extreme distances. There must be analysis of how prevalent TB is in deer. We have seen some results in Wicklow where TB seems to be fairly endemic in the deer population. Obviously, they are infected by other wildlife. How much analysis has there been of the damage done by deer?

We have heard about the skin test and the blood test. Is it possible to do the two tests together or on the one day in a blackspot area, to take some pressure off the farmers?

We are at a point where TB has been reduced significantly. It sat in the middle 30s for a long time and we have reduced it significantly. To take the next step to get near to eradication, if that is possible, the focus on wildlife must increase. We have had proof that controlling TB in badgers has had a very positive effect on the level of TB in areas, but not near enough emphasis is being put on deer. In Wicklow tests on deer have shown they are infected. With the increase in forestry throughout the country, deer will make it extremely problematic to reach eradication.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Dr. Good and her colleagues. I thank her for a very comprehensive presentation. Is she confident the 2030 target can be achieved, particularly in light of the wildlife issues mentioned by Deputy Cahill and Senator Lombard? Recently I met a number of farmers from west Wicklow, along with Deputy Cahill, and the reactor rate in certain areas there was in high teens compared to a national average of 3%. Given this particular challenge, how does Dr. Good see the State being able to achieve total eradication? What additional steps does she feel are required to get to this stage?

Chairman:

Last night, I attended a meeting of farmers. If farmers who produce cattle for slaughter have a restricted herd they are not allowed to buy cattle. Their livelihood could be totally wiped out. Is there any possibility this issue could be examined? If they buy cattle for slaughter only could this be continued so they could carry on with their business? There is a possibility they could be out of business for a number of years, which seems a bit unfair. I know there is compensation, but the compensation they would get would not match what they would earn if they were to continue to trade in cattle.

Dr. Margaret Good:

None of these is a question we have not asked ourselves. It will be challenging to meet the 2030 target of being officially TB free. This does not mean biological extinction of the organism. The TB control programme is governed by a number of directives, one of which is the trading directive. This governs the trading in cattle throughout Europe. It uses the term "officially free", which is not complete biological extinction but very low levels. The first stage will be to get to these very low levels. It will take us longer to get biological extinction whereby we do not have it in any wildlife or cattle. We set ourselves challenging targets previously in conjunction with the farming community, and the 2030 target is achievable.

I will deal with the questions on contiguous herds before those on wildlife. TB tends to be an area problem because it is contagious, so when we detect a herd that is infected and there has been a spread of TB locally in the herd we look at the neighbourhood. We visit the farm to try to figure out where the infection might have been focused.

If somebody had an outfarm and a farm and it was focused on the outfarm we would concentrate on the neighbours around the outfarm who will be notified and put on a programme of testing. Any neighbours in that situation who have not tested in the four months will be restricted until they have passed a test. That is because there were too many instances of neighbours bringing out their cattle to sell once there was a breakdown in the neighbourhood. The disease was then passed on and caused problems in other herds. Not everybody would do that but it was a problem so the rule is that if they have not tested in the previous four months the herd will be restricted until it has tested clear. Once it is clear it can trade again. Until we have the problem in the area sorted we keep doing that. That is a new control introduced in the past year. It is an area of tightening to help us reach the 2030 target.

The skin test is the screening test because it is the most specific test. When reactors are disclosed on that test we aim to do a 24 hour blood test, the blood arrives in the laboratory the following day. We do not expect 100% agreement between the two tests but we do expect approximately 80% at least and in practice we get higher than that. If we get no or very low agreement we go back to see why not. Our first step is to do the eight hour blood test in case there was a mistake in the laboratory or the cells had died on the way to the laboratory and it was less efficient. The cells have to be live. They normally agree but there is always the possibility that they would not. Then we would investigate further why the animals do not seem to be infected.

I was asked were two laboratories sufficient. We have three. One completes the test and does the initial stages. That is based in Dublin and takes the samples from that catchment area. Another is in Sligo and takes the samples from that catchment area. The one in Cork takes the samples from that catchment area. They do the initial incubation stages and the final test and reading is done in Dublin. That is enough. This year we will test approximately 40,000 blood samples which is much fewer than the 8 million skin tests because we do it only in the infected herds and the infected groups of animals.

We would like to have reactors removed as fast as possible from the restricted herds but farmers want to have them valued by a valuer of their choice on the panel, which takes time. That process has imposed some delays. Animals cannot be valued instantaneously. Meanwhile, we will do the blood tests. Sometimes the two processes can overlap, especially if we are in an area where we know we have problems and it is not a herd out of the blue. I do not know that there is much more we can do to speed up the removal and have the animals individually valued and allow the farmer the opportunity to have an appeal and perhaps a second valuation if he is not happy with the first one. That takes time. The valuers are independent while they are on a panel which is approved by the Department.

In response to the question about wildlife, we detected our first infected badger in the 1970s and it took quite a long time before people accepted that they might be part of the problem. Then there was the question of what to do about them. We did various projects and in the early 2000s we agreed a plan with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, under the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, which is responsible for wildlife. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is not responsible for wildlife and badgers are protected. Under that agreement where an epidemiological investigation implicates badgers in a TB breakdown we can remove them. We are limited to removing them from 30% of the country but we have reduced the density of badgers in those years. In those years we have not examined every single badger but we examine approximately one third of the badgers we capture. We did several projects which found that there is TB in badgers throughout Ireland. Where there is TB in cattle the TB in badgers is worse, where there is no TB in cattle the badgers have much lower levels of TB. We concentrate on hotspots and remove badgers from those. We have reduced the level of infection in the badgers by more than 50%. They are now coming more into line with the level in the areas where we did not have problems in cattle. It would seem there is a threshold and when it spills over that poses a greater challenge to the cattle. We will continue to do that.

We have also done quite a lot of work on developing a vaccine with the British and the French have recently joined that group. We ran an oral vaccine project in Kilkenny. It finished recently and the work has been analysed. We expect a report any day on its outcome.

We have a project to catch and vaccinate badgers which is very labour intensive. This is in areas where previously we culled badgers. We are watching to see if we can keep the disease levels at bay and allow a vaccinated population to start to rebuild. We will probably have to do some culling as well. For the long term we are trying to develop a system to deliver vaccine to badgers orally.

In that way, we can get better coverage for the whole country and a better delivery of vaccine to individual badgers. I do not think we could catch enough of them to vaccinate and doing this would be hugely resource-dependent. In our project this year, we have been delivering bait containing biomarkers which leave a residue in the badger. We are using it in the areas where we are capturing badgers to learn how many of them are eating the bait and how long we have to put out the bait before they eat it. This is obviously a novel food for them. A number of ecology studies are ongoing with a view to delivering the vaccine to the badger population. There is no way we would want to wipe out badgers throughout the country.

I expect that the bait project will finish early next year. We will then analyse the results and we will have a better idea of whether we can get wild badgers to eat the vaccine for us. In an ideal world, 80% would eat it and would be vaccinated. When we started this project, nobody knew anything about the immune system of badgers or whether they could mount an immune response to TB. Thankfully, they can and vaccination in a laboratory setting works. I hope we will hear about the vaccine in the field setting shortly. Hopefully, that will work too and both the oral delivery and dummy bait projects will be ready for the next stage. We will have some work to do to get it licensed because getting vaccines licensed under EU medicines regulations is quite complicated, especially when it is a product one is going to be putting into the environment.

The next question was on deer, specifically in Wicklow. I used to work in west Wicklow so I know the area quite well. We removed quite a lot of badgers from west Wicklow earlier this year and that will hopefully help the situation. The area where deer were specifically looked at is a very discrete area of east Wicklow, in the northern part around Calary. There had been very high TB levels in cattle. Having previously looked at cattle, deer and badgers, we found that they shared the same strains of TB. I understand that, with the collaboration of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, there will be a cull of deer in that area over the course of this season and into next year. Hopefully that will reduce the number of deer in the area. In the meantime, we will look at the rest of Wicklow to see if there are any other hot spots but that project has not yet commenced. It will have to be done in conjunction with the National Parks and Wildlife Service because they are the people who are responsible for deer.

Wicklow is unique in that it gets deer samples from hunters. I do not know a lot of the specifics on this because it is not my area, but there is an EU regulation for wild game and which deals with the examinations that have to be done when hunting is for human consumption. The Food Safety Authority has been involved in training hunters to check carcasses and they are required to send us samples if they detect anything that looks similar to TB. We also get farmers to send us samples following hunts and Wicklow is the only county in Ireland where, every year, we have had positive samples. In the past 20 years, every county will have had at least one deer with TB but nowhere near the same number as in Wicklow. I would be very surprised if there were lots of pockets of deer with TB which we had not identified or of which there were no records. As forestry increases, the habitats where deer can hide out during the day have increased and they are very visible on fields grazing but they are not protected and can be killed, so we are more than willing to check out the samples we get. Wildlife control and population management is not the job of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

I was also asked if it is possible to carry out two tests on the same day. We screened herds with the skin test because it is the most specific test. When reactors are found on that test, we go back in and do the blood test. The first blood sampling cannot be done with that test but where disease persists in a herd we repeat the blood tests with the reactor retests and in these cases it is done on the same day. I was also asked what additional steps were needed to get out by 2030. That is a challenge. If we knew the answer, we would already be doing it. Vaccinating badgers is one step and we will probably have to control movement, even more so in infected herds because we have done a number of risk analysis studies and seen that herds which have had a history of TB outbreaks have a tendency towards recrudescence and repeat breakdown. In some cases, stock has been sold before the repeat breakdown so we allow a short movement window after we derestrict the herd for stock. The risk studies suggest they are safe enough for the first 60-90 days but, as time progresses, they get more and more risky. This year, where there is a high risk of breakdown we allow a three-month movement window after we derestrict the herd and the herd must be tested again some time in the next five months. Once the three months have elapsed, farmers can sell to slaughter and they can also sell calves under six weeks of age. They cannot sell anything else until after another herd test has been carried out.

The farmers involved can choose the most suitable time for themselves within the following five months to do the test. That limits the potential for spread from those. We will need to do things like that to limit potential spread. Probably in some of the areas where TB tends to focus, instead of one annual test we might bring in two, but we have not made any decisions on anything else yet.

We work a lot with the Centre for Veterinary Epidemiology and Risk Analysis in UCD. It does much of the analysis of data, looking for the risks of various aspects. When we have the risks identified, we try to figure out how we can mitigate those risks and prevent them causing problems. If members have any ideas on what additional steps might help, they should feel free to present them and we will examine them.

The other question was on producing cattle for slaughter. I mentioned a number of directives that govern TB eradication and trade. One of those requires that when TB is detected, the herd must be restricted and no buy-in is allowed until the herd has had a clear test. We had many more herds restricted because of detections at slaughter from fattening herds. At one stage we had-----

Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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It is down to 750 now.

Dr. Margaret Good:

It is down to 750 now, so we have reduced it considerably. We hope the blood testing we are doing in the infected herds will reduce that even further and that it will pick up animals. While we still had the blood tests under trial, we had animals that had been positive but were not surrendered and we watched them progress. They were up to ten times more likely to become reactor within 18 months or turn up with lesions when slaughtered compared with their herd mates that had been negative to the test. By taking out those animals we hope we are also contributing to the reduction in the number of animals that we will kill out with TB when they are slaughtered.

For many years 20% of those herds would have a really bad TB outbreak when we detected them at slaughter. It then reduced to only 16% and at the latest count it has dropped another couple of percentage points below 16%. So that seems to be working. I know it is no consolation to the beef-fattening farmers, but fewer of them are in trouble than was the case. If they do a test that is clear, they can be given permission to buy in. We have a small number of herds where very reluctantly the EU officials agreed to something we called "feedlots". Initially they thought they would be like fedlots that were in America and the rest of Europe, that the cattle would be housed all the time. They were appalled that the cattle would be out on grass. We have assured them that these are not breeding herds, etc. They are operating a very tight thing. Every year they ask us questions about them. They do not like that we allow this exception and it is against EU rules.

Chairman:

I wish to clarify. Is Dr. Good saying that where there is a feedlot where all the cattle are housed 24-7 and 365 days a year, they are exempt?

Dr. Margaret Good:

They are kind of exempt from the need to have a clear test before being allowed to buy in again. In some cases if a farm has a block of land that is double fenced-----

Chairman:

That would really-----

Dr. Margaret Good:

The EU officials are still worried about them because they claim that if the cattle are infected they might infect the badgers and other wildlife, and contaminate the environment. They do not like it. We cannot unilaterally change the rule, which has existed since 1978.

Chairman:

I thank Dr. Good for her very comprehensive answering of questions.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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When the analysis of the study into badgers is finished, Dr. Good might make it available to us.

Dr. Margaret Good:

Absolutely. I am sure the Minister will be delighted.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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If it is good news.

Dr. Margaret Good:

Yes, if it is good news. He would probably not be so delighted if it is not; we will keep our fingers crossed.

Chairman:

I thank Dr. Good for appearing before the committee and giving a very comprehensive presentation to us. The whole area is very interesting. I also thank her colleagues for being present.