Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am a little hoarse so I hope the Members will forgive me. I thank the Deputies for raising this matter. It is obviously very important to the region they represent.

The laboratories are an integral part of the Department, providing scientific evidence and expertise which allow the Department to function effectively as a regulator to deal with new and emerging risks and to respond rapidly to disease outbreaks and food safety incidents. The laboratories also provide valued services and advisory support to the farming community, the food industry and wider society.

My Department promotes and regulates an agrifood industry that has ambitious targets for growth and development over the next decade, as set out in Food Wise 2025. Sectoral expansion is already well under way, export trade is increasing year by year and new markets for Irish food are being continually accessed. The integrity of our national offering as a food island must be underpinned by robust systems that protect and enhance our reputation as a producer of safe and wholesome food and we must respond to this challenge by developing and enhancing our capabilities, safeguarding the food chain and public health and ensuring that our food production systems are both economically and environmentally sustainable.

In this context it is essential that we develop a long-term strategy for our laboratories that builds on existing capability and expertise in animal health, food safety and plant sciences and ensures we achieve both operational and scientific excellence. This was the primary reason for tasking a working group led by Professor Alan Reilly with undertaking a comprehensive review of our laboratories. Having considered the current and future needs of the Department and its external stakeholders, this working group presented a report to my Department late last year which makes recommendations on oversight and co-ordination of the laboratories' activities, reorganisation of structures and functions within the central laboratory complex, options for the future development of the regional laboratories with a view to improving disease investigative and surveillance capability but with the overriding imperative of maintaining and enhancing services to farmers and human resources management within the laboratories with a focus on grading structures, career development opportunities and workforce planning.

The Department’s laboratory management team is now consulting with relevant stakeholders, including staff in all of the laboratories, on these recommendations. It is important to emphasise that a decision on any of the working group’s recommendations will await the outcome of this consultative process. In the case of the regional veterinary laboratories, including the Sligo laboratory and its provision of laboratory diagnostic services and surveillance coverage for the north west, any decision will be informed by a cost-benefit analysis of the various options that have been proposed.

I wish to emphasise that a key objective of the strategy we are developing for the laboratories is to improve on our existing capability in surveillance of animal diseases at a national level so as to maintain the reputation of Irish food and food production systems. While delivering on that wider good to the farming community, the Department is also exploring how access to veterinary laboratory services can be maintained and improved on a nationwide basis.

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