Mr. Michael Sheahan:

The Deputy came up with a few good new ones. On the drought, which obviously had a significant impact on many parts of the country, we have not seen any pattern that would link a change in behaviour to problems in an area or whatever. It is often the case with TB, however, that it is only when one looks back 12 or 18 months later that one might see a pattern, but thus far we have not seen a pattern of meal-feeding practices changing the levels of TB in an area.

On whether there is a difference in the prevalence of TB among different cattle like that among deer, we had touched on that earlier. In recent times, there has been quite a bit of work done on genetic resistance. The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, ICBF, can now tell us that particular lines of bulls tend to be more resistant to TB than other lines. The ICBF and others have done work on that, and over the next couple of years it will become a larger part of the tools we use to tackle TB. In regard to specific breeds, we would not say, for example, that the Hereford breed is more susceptible than Aberdeen Angus because we do not have any evidence of that. There is no doubt, however, that genetics is an issue.