Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will be aware, on 19 October the Taoiseach announced that the whole country would move to level 5 of the framework for living with Covid-19 for a period of six weeks, starting at midnight on Wednesday, 21 October. This decision was made on foot of strong evidence presented to the Government of a potentially grave situation arising in the weeks ahead. For marts this meant a return to similar conditions under which they operated in the first phase of the pandemic.

The Taoiseach has called on us all to work together to suppress the virus and to reopen as much of our society and economy as possible when it is safe to do so. The core responsibility of the Government is to protect lives and public health while also protecting livelihoods and supporting the wider economy and society.

Protecting the agri-food sector and people in rural communities was at the centre of my Department's direction on 20 October that buyers could not physically congregate in sales rings and that all marts conduct sales by brokering transactions or using online platforms only. Marts have been using online platforms since April. Although marts are operating sales online, buyers may view livestock for sale at the mart premises and individual appointment times are allocated to individual buyers to view or collect livestock. From a position where few marts had online systems in place in April, there has been a rapid take-up of the new systems by marts over recent months. The vast majority of marts currently have online systems in place and are operating through online platforms. Some remaining marts are in the process of installing such platforms. Thousands of cattle and sheep have been bought and sold successfully online recently. As with any new technology, however, there have been some glitches, which have been dealt with. Marts have been operating smoothly in recent times.

This is undoubtedly a challenging time. My Department is closely monitoring the situation and we are seeing some positive aspects of online sales at marts, despite some reports that marts and potential buyers have not been able to access the online platforms due to connectivity issues, in particular last Saturday week.

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