Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I am glad the Cooley farms legal case was raised. I would like to make a few points in this regard as it is important we address this fully and I do not want to leave any doubt. First, this Bill is in line with the Cooley farms case, which stated clearly that the Constitution protects property and, therefore, people will get paid as a result of losing their property if the State requires them to do so. If we were to unilaterally cut compensation, we would be in court very quickly unless we could show it was a reasonable course of action around some of the issues I have already raised.

On the other point in regard to the 1966 Act, which uses the terminology "shall pay", it is somewhat selective to just quote the "shall pay" element because it is then stated in the Act that this is subject to agreement with the Minister for Finance, which is essentially an out. Therefore, the Department will pay, subject to agreement with the Department of Finance, but if the Department of Finance raises a concern as to why there should be a payment of money, the payment does not go ahead. We have actually taken the Department of Finance out of the equation in this Bill and have stated that the Minister "may" pay. As far I understand it, section 35 lists the circumstances whereby there may be a doubt in regard to whether there is full payment or no payment.

There is no effort here, as Senator Ó Domhnaill suggests, to try to shift the onus for payment onto insurance companies. I can assure him that is not the issue. The idea that farmers would have to pay a fortune for insurance to cover the costs of reactors in their herds is not something we are asking farmers to do. This is a State-sponsored eradication programme for TB and any of the other diseases we are targeting. If a farmer's herd unfortunately picks up TB from wildlife through a badger or some other animal, or from a contiguous herd, then that farmer will have compensation applied to him or her. With regard to the other disease control mechanisms or in the case of a bio-security breach where there is an outbreak of a very serious disease and herds have to be slaughtered en masse, the point is that a person cannot insure against such a situation, which hopefully we will not see in my time as a Minister, although we never know.

This is not supposed to be targeting farmers or shifting the onus away from the State to try to save money or anything like that, quite the opposite. It provides more clarity than the previous legislation, which required payments to be subject to agreement from the Minister for Finance. I believe we have provided more clarity here than was perhaps in that 1966 legislation.