Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was relieved when we got the final results of our tests last week because it was confirmation of what we had suspected to be the case. This was a once-off, isolated case. Obviously we would rather it did not happen. Last year we had no cases. The year before we had one. The year before that there were three cases. These one-off cases seem to happen. They happen in other countries as well. When BSE is a historical problem that is being dealt with, there seem to be isolated cases every now and again which need to be caught by the system and dealt with in a transparent and comprehensive way. I hope and I think that is the way we dealt with this case. In doing that, markets and the industry have been pretty calm in their response. There has been no indication any damage will be done to Ireland's reputation or our capacity to trade. We are a big exporter and trader of beef. When something unexpected and unwelcome happens, my job is to ensure we are very open about it and deal with it in a full and comprehensive way by testing and proving there is no other problem apart from the one outlier. We did this with the testing systems we had in place.

It is unfortunate that this happened the week after the World Organisation for Animal Health, the OIE, essentially recognised that Ireland has done a really good job dealing with BSE as a historical problem by classifying the country as being in the negligible risk category. We were delighted with that classification. It may now need to reassess the classification as a result of this case because its rules require it to do so and we will, potentially, go back to where we were a month ago. Let us not forget, however, that we opened up all these new markets, and we have been more successful than any other European country in doing so, with a controlled risk status. On the basis of that controlled risk status, which I think everyone recognises is very comprehensive, we can continue to expand and grow our beef trade into new markets such as China and the United States in a very exciting way. I am very confident we can do that.

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