Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The case did not happen on the watch of the current Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine but is an historical case. Dan Brennan appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine around this time last year. He has been in Brussels twice with this case and has got no answers. He looked for his file that was submitted to Brussels at the time but they refused to give him back his file.

Dan Brennan deserves answers. We do not know what happened on his farm but many questions must be answered. I will pose some of them here this evening. Why did the trees die on Dan Brennan's farm? Why did bones grow in his cattle's tissue and kidneys? Why did the milk yield of his cows double when the factory closed? Why did his cattle's weight at two years go up from 320 kg to 520 kg when the factory closed? Why did the foliage on his farm recover after the factory's closure? After cattle trials were performed on his farm involving cattle being taken from his farm and put on a neighbour's farm and vice versaand cattle being brought from a Teagasc farm and put on his farm, the lack of thrive was clearly demonstrated again on his farm. Why was this ignored? A total of 45 acres of trees and ditches were wiped out and this was confirmed by an Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, report. Again, why was all this evidence not clearly examined? When UCD asked the EPA about the amount of cadmium being emitted from the factory, all the EPA records showed 1 kg per hour. However, the EPA wrote back to UCD and documented that it was only 1 g per hour, which is 1,000 times less. Why?

I have posed a lot of questions. Thankfully, Dan Brennan is now farming very successfully and efficiently on his farm, but he and his family suffered torment while this factory was in operation and those questions need to be answered.

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