Mr. Colm Forde:

Up to last year, if one wanted to find out about the TB eradication programme, the only available information on our website was our submission to the EU for co-funding. The submission was almost 100 pages in length; it was a very dense document. The submission used technical language that would not be understood by the average person. Ms Greene's team developed a 20-page document, copies of which we can supply to the committee. The document uses very friendly, common language and provides a high-level explanation of how the programme works and what we try to do.

The issue of reactor removal times has been raised constantly by our stakeholders. Ideally, we would remove reactors from farms as soon as they are identified. The major issue as to why it takes a protracted period to remove them is to allow for independent evaluation. The latter is relatively unique to Ireland. In the UK, there is a book evaluation.

If a farmer is unfortunate enough to suffer a breakdown, he will be told over the phone the type of animal he has and its value. The reactor can then be removed. In Ireland, however, if a farmer were unfortunate enough to suffer a breakdown, the local office will call him and give him the names of the valuers who operate in the county. It takes a number of days to allow the valuer to go to the farm, look at the animals, do all the paperwork and send the farmer a valuation by post. The farmer has then three or four days to consider the valuation and make a decision. There is a level of to and fro to allow for the valuation process and the system allows for a second appeal valuation, if the farmer is unhappy with the valuation. All of that process means that the average reactor removal times can take up to 20 days. We are keen to reduce that timeframe as much as possible. I was asked whether we had any particular commitment to do that, and we do. There is a commitment for the Department to remove reactors within ten days after all documentation on the valuation process has been signed off by the farmer and the Department. We are working to reduce that time and it is now down to approximately five days. We report on that monthly and-or quarterly to the Farmers' Charter which meets in Portlaoise.

One of the key actions we have taken to reduce reactor removal times, as Mr. Michael Sheahan mentioned earlier, is the gamma interferon policy. When there are three or more reactors in the herd, there will be follow-up blood testing to try to see if there is any more infection in the herd. Prior to last year, the standard practice in the public service's efforts to drive efficiency and value for money for the taxpayer was to wait until all reactors had been identified and then collect all the reactors together - those initially identified through the skin test and then the ones identified separately through the blood test. The policy we have in place in all of our regional offices now is that as soon as the skin test reactors have been identified, we go and collect them, and if there are subsequent reactors identified by a blood test, we collect them then. The focus is on disease eradication. That has helped to bring down the reactor removal timeframe significantly. What we are doing to facilitate it is to change the haulier contracts we have to collect reactors. We are employing more hauliers and they can use small vehicles. A jeep or a pick-up truck as opposed to a lorry could collect ten or 20 reactors in a locality to justify the trip. That is one of the things we are doing to reduce reactor removal times. We have told all stakeholders that we are open to any other proposals which will help us to reduce that timeline further because the Senator is correct that from a disease perspective, we want to get the reactor off the farm as quickly as possible.