Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I compliment the witnesses on their presentations, which were very informative. I will start by talking about bovine TB eradication, which we have been trying to do since 1954. We had the pleasure some years ago of having an engagement with Dr. Margaret Good, who is a formidable lady. She told us about her 30-year strategy to eradicate TB. We all sat in a committee room like this one and listened to her. Years have passed since then and we now know we will never eradicate TB. However, we still have an eradication programme. We should be fair to the farming community and call it a control programme rather than an eradication programme. Nearly 70 years after we first tried to eradicate the disease, we have made progress but we are now in an environment involving many different interfaces, whether they involve moving stock, interactions with wildlife or whatever else. Do we honestly believe we will arrive at a scenario at some stage whereby bovine TB will be eradicated from the island?