Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister. He mentioned increased funding. I believe the eradication programme cost about €75 million in 2023. There is a lot of money being spent on this, going back over the decades. We talk about the price of the children's hospital. We are into that kind of money having been spent on trying to eradicate TB in this country, and we are probably worse now than we were many decades ago.

It is time to look at this anew. I respect that the Minister said he has taken on the views of many of the farm organisations and people who were at the forum who felt the initial proposals were trying to place the farmers very much in the firing line in relation to this. There has to be a way of dealing with it in a partnership way whereby everybody can work together to try to eradicate this disease. Ultimately, that is what we need to do. We need to build a consensus across the farm organisations, the Department and everybody involved in the food industry to ensure we can continue to produce the high quality beef product in Ireland that we can market all over the world and that we can guarantee we have eradicated this disease once and for all. It will take a Trojan effort and that is why the Minister needs to continue to work with everybody to make that happen.

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