Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the movement and commitment to deal with bovine TB and the huge problem it is throughout the length and breadth of the country. A lot of family farms are locked up and there is a whole crisis around that. I gave an example last week, or maybe earlier this week, of a farmer who had written to me. He had seven cattle who went down with TB. The compensation was based on 2023 prices, so he was only able to buy four replacements for those seven cattle with the money he got. That is a big problem for a lot of the farmers out there, in that the level of compensation they get is not able to match their loss because they have to go to the mart the next week or the following week and buy cattle to replace what they have lost. The way prices are at the moment, they cannot afford to do it. We can talk about the level of compensation and all of that but unless farmers are getting equal, like-for-like compensation, they are having serious problems. That is one of the biggest worries people have, namely, that when they have reactors in their herds and get the compensation, the compensation is not able to replace what they have lost. That is the one point I wanted to raise with the Minister and is something that really needs to be dealt with.

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