Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

On the issues being discussed in the forum and who will make that decision, ultimately, the best policy is an agreed one. A couple of years ago, we saw significant farmer opposition to certain policies that the Department tried to implement. The forum is trying to bring everybody together by working collaboratively. We know where the issues are with regard to the risk of TB and further outbreaks of the disease. In the past couple of months the Department and the farmer organisations have been discussing how to address these key issues which we need to wrestle with. All farm organisations are aware that we just cannot stay with what we have been doing for the past number of years because it is clearly not working. Those conversations, as the Senator can imagine, are difficult and I do not want to breach the confidential nature of any of those conversations-----