Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I do not know why amendment No. 48 is being taken with amendment No. 43 because they are on entirely different issues. One amendment is about an appeal with regard to an animal welfare notice, and we will discuss that section shortly, which is an entirely different issue to somebody not receiving compensation after a disease outbreak which caused the destruction of a herd because the animals were stolen or illegally owned. I will consider Deputy Ó Domhnaill's concerns. Obviously we do not want to bring farmers to court unnecessarily. I stress there would need to be a very good reason for us not to compensate somebody required under the legislation to destroy a herd. It would be a fairly cut and dry decision for a Minister. I will come back to this issue on Report Stage.

I make decisions as the Minister with responsibility for fisheries and often when it comes to decisions on quota allocations there are winners and losers with some people happy and others unhappy. We find ourselves in court all of the time. We need clear guidelines and a transparent decision-making process. It is normally the process which is tested in court and it would be the same in this case. If there is good reason for the legislation to be applied resulting in a farmer not receiving full compensation or any compensation I suspect it would be the process that would be questioned in law rather than the actual decision itself. I do not know whether one needs an appeals process. I will examine it. The Deputy can press the amendment if he wishes but at present I cannot accept it.