Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 18 June 2025
Select Committee on Agriculture and Food
Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Further Revised)
2:00 am
Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I will finish on this point. We do have a different model, but this is not impossible. For so long, farmers have felt it is impossible. It is not. What we have to do now is a range of interventions and measures that will stop the increase that has been happing in recent times, stabilise it and then within a two- or three-year period we could see a very significant reduction in the numbers of incidences. If we get it back down to 2% or 3%, we can talk about eradication with real credibility, and maybe other sets of measures. We have to stop the increase right now because it is heading in a direction that is seeding out and it is not good. It is small in overall terms but the trajectory of growth is going in the wrong direction, and we have to stop that now.