Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are not many coming forward with the answers, but we need answers. That is why I am calling a meeting of the TB forum. Nobody suffers more than farmers when herds are restricted. Farmers experience stress when they are facing a test, particularly if they have gone down in the test in recent times. There is also the cost impact on them. It is incumbent on all of us in the Oireachtas and on the farming stakeholders and primary representative organisations to work together to turn the dial in the other direction, to start to get on top of this disease again and to work towards its eradication. Certainly, the current trajectory is going in the opposite direction, and that is in nobody's interest. The reason I am calling a meeting of the TB forum is to get people together. We need the answers and we must get people behind it. How we go about it might not necessarily be easy, but we must be clear and united in the objective, which is to improve the situation for farmers, to eradicate this disease and to eradicate its massive cost to farmers. I certainly hope that in calling the stakeholders together in the TB forum we can start to move in that direction.

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