Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There is little points for Deputies to wait here until 10.15 p.m. to listen to scripted response from a Minister of State on a question. The purpose of these oral discussions is that points will be raised during the discussion to which the relevant Minister can then respond. In this case, I might as well have just stuck in a written question to the Minister because all I am getting back is a written response. It is important that Ministers who have the authority, who have background and who are from the Departments should appear here to answer questions, otherwise there is no point in actually being here at all. This is a very serious issue that is affecting many farmers. It is not the fault of the Minister of State in front of me that this is the case. I do not put the blame on him for this, but it is a system problem.

I note that in his response the Minister of State refused to confirm that all sheepmeat that is stickered as being Irish meat is actually Irish, which is significant. Some of these live imports are obviously coming from the North of Ireland, which is fine.

We know 26,000 sheep last year came from elsewhere and were imported into Ireland. It is likely sheep are being imported into the North from elsewhere and being sold in the South and, therefore, also being stickered as Irish sheep meat.

I tabled this Topical Issue because the parliamentary questions I have tabled to the Minister on this have not been answered. I have asked over and over about the accuracy of information recorded on exports of live animals or animal products on TRACES. I wanted to know the number of TRACES declarations for exports from Ireland to other EU and intra-EU countries for live exports and animal products, the number of individual verification checks completed, the number of con-conformances found and the nature of these non-conformances. These are important questions that are not being responded to by oral question or by Topical Issues at 10.15 p.m.

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