Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I strongly condemn any cruelty towards animals. The incidents in the clips shown by RTÉ were repugnant and have been widely condemned across the farming and dairy sectors. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has sought the footage used in the programme to commence an investigation into these events. As Deputy Cairns rightly said, the reputation of the dairy and beef sector rests on complying with high standards of animal welfare, and the vast majority of farmers, processors and other workers have a strong commitment to ensuring animals are not mistreated. For sustainable dairy into the future, it is vital that dairy farmers continue to ensure high levels of calf care on farms and that all those working in the supply chain continue to support high standards of animal welfare, particularly at marts and during transport. Any incidents of such cruelty should be reported to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on its animal welfare helpline, and I assure the House that it will take robust and timely actions in response to any evidence of animal cruelty.

In response to the Deputy's question, connecting animal cruelty to the expansion of the dairy sector per seis a little simplistic. Sadly, there are people who will mistreat animals no matter how many animals there are, and that is the truth of it, just as there are truckers who will break the road safety rules, no matter what they are, and there are truckers who breach the road safety rules while carrying all sorts of things, not just cattle. These are people who are breaking the law and going against Government policy. It is the Government's animal welfare policy and laws they are breaking and the Government's road safety laws and policies they are breaking. The people who perpetrated this are therefore absolutely against Government policy and against the laws we pass in this House.

As regards the issue of sexed semen, which the Deputy mentioned, there has been an increase in the use of sexed semen, which allows dairy farmers to select appropriate breeding strategies for good-quality replacement dairy heifers and to focus on dairy calf breeding for the rest of their calves. Sexed semen now makes up about 20% of artificial insemination use, and we would like to see that increase. We recently announced a world-first genotyping programme, with an investment of €43 million over five years, to genotype cows and calves. That will give beef farmers accurate information on the commercial beef value of the dairy-beef calves they buy and will encourage dairy farmers to make more informed and better breeding decisions to produce better quality dairy-beef calves.

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