Paraic Brady (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister and his officials for being here today. I, too, welcome this forum. We are here for the betterment of the agricultural sector. That must be said.

Regarding water quality, I concur with my Senator friend and colleague regarding Irish Water.

The blame game seems to always fall on the farmer but we need to look at other sectors that are causing the problem, more so than the farming sector.

I will talk about TB quickly and then I will go back to a few other areas. On TB in general, when an animal goes down and shows lesions in a factory, it shows the TB has gone too far and a skin test did not pick it up in the past. That is when it shows lesions in the factory. We have a skin test for TB but we are not doing enough blood testing. Where an animal goes down as a result of the skin test, I hope we introduce the blood test automatically in all counties for those herds. The blood test has a greater rate of detecting TB than the skin test.

If I have an inspection for the basic income support scheme, BISS, or an NCT on my car, I get a report. Every farmer gets a report when they do an NCT. Why are we not sending out reports on TB testing? The information is there. It is not a big job to send out a report to every farmer regarding their TB test. The farmer can look through their report and see if there is an animal that has a high reading that did not go down. It is then up to them to make a decision to feed up that animal and not sell it through the marts but put it straight into the factory.

This is very important. We want to address this, in that if an animal has a high reading but still passes, that animal can be sold in a mart and sold to somebody else. That is an area we need to check. Will reports be sent to farmers in future regarding TB testing to categorise what stage their animals are at? As the Minister knows, there is huge stress, hardship and mental health challenges associated with TB. A number of years ago, I had an animal that went down and I lost a lot of animals. It was just before I got married.

There is no helpline a farmer can ring regarding their concerns when an animal goes down. There is a huge amount of stress associated with that. There is a whole aspect there we need to deal with. The Department should have a helpline so a farmer can lift the phone. We talk about mental health and one thing and another. There is nothing worse than losing a whole herd of animals as it affects the family and the family farm.

Regarding TB hotspots, I am sure we know them. In these hotspots, have we done everything in our power to control the TB in them? Have we vaccinated all the badgers in those areas? Are there areas we have missed within that? Is there a scheme? If a farmer has a TB set on their land, will there be a package there for them to fence off that set so the animals are not allowed around that set? Will there be some sort of a package if a farmer has a set and rings the Department and identifies it? Information is key in this. We have to know where all the badger sets are within the country. If we know that, we know exactly where the problems are or where the vaccinations need to be. Information is key for both the farmer and the Department.

I have questions about a few other areas. I will let the Minister answer those questions first, if he does not mind, and I will come back to others in a second.