Mr. Padraig Walshe:

I am delighted to be here to give my support to Mr. Brennan's case. I first became involved in this case in 2003, when Mr. Brennan and a neighbour of his came to visit me at home one evening. Subsequently, we went up to the farm. I knew from the minute I drove into the farm that the farmer was not the problem. You would know from looking around any farmyard whether you were dealing with someone who was below par or with somebody who was on their game, to put it in sporting parlance. The fact that so many of Mr. Brennan's neighbours are here tonight to support him is proof of this. There are ten people who took time to come here this evening to show their support for Dan Brennan. I thank them for doing it and they are delighted to be here in support of the man.

A great deal of investigation and reporting was carried out on this farm over a few years. Do not forget that we are talking about the worst period on the farm, which was from approximately 1999 to 2007, when the Celtic tiger was roaring loud and when production in that factory increased day after day to meet the demands for building materials at the time. The higher the production in the factory, the worse the situation became on the farm. I would not have believed what I had witnessed if I had not seen it with my own eyes. Many institutions of this State set out to prove that Dan Brennan was a bad farmer, rather than trying to get to the bottom of what was at issue. They spent a fortune trying to prove that Dan Brennan was a bad farmer. They put in a tractor and a diet feed wagon for two years, with a man driving it and moving cattle to different farms. The owner of one of the farms to which the cattle were moved is here tonight. The one thing that the feeding trial proved was there was no problem with the feed on Dan Brennan's farm because it worked on the other farm. Yet, the feed that was brought from the other farm onto Dan Brennan's farm did not work with the animals. This proves to me as a layperson that the problem was actually on the farm. If it had not been for people such as Jim Crilly, Michael Lambe, Tom Slevin and the other veterinary people who were involved and who discovered items such as fluoride and cadmium on the farm, we would not have been able to get to the bottom of this.

One of the most annoying parts of the whole system in Ireland is factories do their own monitoring and the EPA does very little of the monitoring of the factory. I know an owner-operator of another factory of a similar type who told me that the EPA always gave him approximately two weeks' notice before its representatives came up. We also know what happened around the samples being contaminated with cadmium in the laboratory. That leaves me very suspicious that it was deliberate.

Not only that but other samples that were taken on the farm were mislaid or lost because obviously somebody did not want them to be tested for cadmium or fluoride. Dan Brennan spent something like two years getting cattle in every two weeks for veterinary personnel to play with them and take those blood samples, 600 of which were contaminated in a laboratory and more than 200 of which were mislaid. As a farmer, if I were to present that type of defence for anything that happened on my farm, do the members think it would be accepted by the same Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine? I can assure them it would not and the Chairman knows well it would not.

I do not blame Dan Brennan for refusing to co-operate with the Department in the later years when it wanted to take more samples and to continue to try to prove the problem was on the farm rather than looking elsewhere to where the real problem was. Dan Brennan's farm, as Mr. Crilly pointed out, was 12 m higher than the chimney stack in the factory. The EPA admits it was the main area for fallout from that chimney stack, but yet the agency refused to go any further than Dan Brennan's farm with its investigations.

I will not delay the committee except to mention one simple incident. Dan was working on his farm one day and a pungent smell came to him. He rang the EPA to complain about it, but within ten minutes of him ringing the EPA, there were too many personnel from the factory on his farm abusing him. Obviously, the EPA had rung the factory.

Chairman, I do not think there is much more that can be said other than that I, as a farmer who farms not ten miles from Dan Brennan, support him 100% and I lay any reputation or credibility I have on the line to support this man because I would not believe, as I said, the way the institutions of the State colluded to undermine this individual. He is a strong man to be here and his wife, who is here with him, is strong too because there are a lot of people out there who are not around today who went through a lot less than what Dan Brennan did.