Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The action has been taken and the matter has been well rehearsed in the House in the past week. Given the size of the national herd, I find it difficult to believe, and many people found it shocking, that these cattle could have gone feral in the first instance and that expertise was not available, in particular to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, to gather up the cattle and have them removed from the farm without their needing to be shot by the Defence Forces.

For how long was the official assignee responsible for the herd? How was he managing the herd in the run-up to this situation? There should have been another way of dealing with it that was not as visible and shocking to many people as seeing soldiers in fields shooting cattle. Will the Minister examine whether the Department could have had the expertise to address the situation more efficiently?

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