Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising those points and articulating very well the emotion there was and is around what was a terrible time in our country. My colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, regrets that he cannot attend today. He is on a trade mission overseas representing Irish farmers and the Irish agrifood industry and he has asked me to attend in his place.

The foot and mouth crisis in Ireland in 2000 and 2001 was a particularly harrowing and stressful time for businesspeople right across the economy, particularly for farmers. Foot and mouth disease is a highly contagious virus found in cloven-hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and deer and is one of the most contagious animal diseases. Animals can become infected through inhalation, ingestion or reproduction. It has the capability to spread long distances via the wind under certain circumstances.

The then Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Joe Walsh, took stringent measures in response to the outbreak of foot and mouth in an abattoir in Essex, UK, in February 2001 to try to prevent transmission of the disease in Ireland. Despite those efforts, however, Ireland experienced its first foot and mouth outbreak since 1941 in March 2001. On 22 March 2001, an outbreak was confirmed in a sheep flock near Jenkinstown, County Louth, as the Senator will be all too well aware. As foot and mouth disease is so contagious, the only way to contain any further incursion of the disease in the country was to cull a large number of animals in the Cooley Peninsula, near the source of the outbreak. This prompt action by the Minister at the time and extensive culling in the area around the infected premises resulted in the successful control of the disease, which, if it had spread, would have caused incalculable damage to Irish agriculture.

Many businesses across the economy were adversely affected by this episode. Farmers who lost stock due to depopulation were compensated for their losses by means of a payment under section 17 of the Diseases of Animals Act 1966.In order to estimate the value of the stock, the Department, at the time, relied on the services of an expert independent valuer. A number of farmers subsequently brought a legal challenge, seeking additional compensation from the State. That litigation concluded in the Supreme Court in 2014, and the issue of compensation was remitted back to the High Court for further assessment. No further progress was made on these cases until 2022, when these farmers withdrew the remaining litigation from the High Court. The Department settled these cases on a without admission of liability basis. This was on the basis that the settlement would finally resolve all active, outstanding Cooley farmer cases, and was not based on the State applying an uplift to all farmers who received compensation for foot and mouth disease in 2001. Had such an outcome been contemplated, it is likely that the Department could not have settled these cases on such terms, and in the manner it did.

The foot and mouth outbreak, which occurred more than 22 years ago, had a really significant impact on many sectors right across the economy, and especially agriculture. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine considers that flock owners were appropriately compensated financially for their losses at the time. The compensation made to farmers in 2001 was clearly understood by the recipients to be a full and final settlement of any losses which they had suffered as a consequence of the depopulation. This is a matter which the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine regards as being concluded, and it can see no legal basis to reopen the issue.