Mr. Martin Blake:

I will address a number of issues raised by Senator Paul Daly on how to assist in breeding. The new system provides infrastructure through which people can address breeding issues, which they could not do up to now. This infrastructure will allow people to consciously engage in breeding practices and to plan breeding, which was not possible in the past because we did not have an individual identification system.

Senator Lawlor also raised the issue of how we foresee the system working. A farmer will turn up at a factory with a document and will no longer be required to write in the 12-digit number. He will have a dispatch document from the Department, as is currently the case, in which he will enter the number of sheep he is delivering. He will sign the document, as he does now, and once it is scanned at the factory or mart he will receive a printout of the tag numbers. He could have 20 numbers and he must verify that the printout coincides with his understanding of what he has delivered. That will be acceptable in the context of farm records for cross-compliance purposes.

In the context of what is different between the new system and the old system in terms of animals moving directly from farm to slaughter, we have taken a policy decision to implement an electronic identification, EID, system. This means all our traceability and identification will be based on an EID system which allows data capture. That is the only difference. The animal moving from farm to slaughter will still have a single tag. However, it will be a single electronic tag that allows it to be read into the plant, and that is captured at the level of the individual animal number.

Deputy McConalogue raised a number of issues on the cost of the system to the farmer. We acknowledge that there is a cost to the farmer. The Minister has announced a contribution of €50 on the basis of a 100-ewe lamb flock at a cost of €75 to €78 per year. Our plan for developing the animal identification and movement, AIM, database to capture the individual information is on our agenda. It is intended to develop an AIM database to capture individual animal identification.

Deputy Mulherin raised the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, FSAI, report. The report is based on a view of the current system. It and other audits fed in to our discussion in the context of where we need to move to. The system is not working and needs to become seamless and frictionless. It is based on paper records and people writing things down. The fundamental problem in terms of introducing a traceability system is the lack of readability and accuracy of manual records. We have plenty of examples of sheets arriving at a slaughter plant that are not readable.

It is very hard to expect someone delivering 300 sheep to a slaughter plant to sit down and accurately transcribe 12 digits 300 times. The fundamental problem with the traceability system is that it is based on such records. We acknowledge that, with the best will in the world, it cannot be done accurately or consistently and be the basis for promoting and developing a traceability system.