Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

Council Regulation (EC) 1774/2002 sets out the provisions relating to the disposal of all animal by-products including the digestate produced through anaerobic digestion in approved biogas plants. Under this regulation digestate, which may include animal by-products from such plants, may not be spread on pastureland.

In addition, however, Ireland has adopted national controls to counteract the spread of BSE. The need to prevent the spread of this disease has been of central importance to Ireland since its discovery here in 1989. Over the years as scientific knowledge has progressed, a sequence of measures was introduced in the EU to combat the spread of BSE. These measures are aimed principally at ensuring the safety of the consumers of beef and at preventing the exposure of cattle to the infective BSE agent through feed. Ireland has adopted control measures in advance of other member states and, in some cases, has adopted more stringent controls than elsewhere in the European Union. One of the controls in place and laid down in S I 551 of 2002 prohibits, in effect, the spreading on land of digestate from a biogas plant where the feed stock used in that plant had any animal by-product in it containing animal protein.

The robust approach we have taken has been successful in having Ireland's BSE controls validated within the European Union and by countries outside of the Union, thereby protecting valuable export outlets for our agricultural production on which we are uniquely dependant. In addition, the fall in the numbers of BSE cases in recent years and the increasing age profile of the cases detected is concrete proof of the effectiveness of the control measures in place.

However, in view of the declining rate of BSE cases here, I have asked my officials to review the need to maintain specific control measures in the disposal of certain animal by-products, including those that may be included in digestate from biogas plants.

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