Paraic Brady (Fine Gael)

I find myself raising something I raised here last week. We had a TB task force last week involving farming organisations, the Department of agriculture and the Minister. At the task force there were nine hours of discussions. No. 2 on the list was to promote badger biodiversity. No. 5 on the list was mandatory disclosure of TB herds categorisation. For anyone who does not understand this, categorisation means actually labelling a farmer in a mart where his animals are being sold. It means putting something up on a board that completely discriminates against that man, his livestock and his herd. With that up on the board, nobody would want to buy an animal that has come from a restricted herd in the past. Then we are talking about having a gap of at least a two years and six months before we have a clear test for the livestock unit.

Before any decisions are made on this on this TB forum, I call on the Minister and departmental officials to come in and meet the agriculture committee that has been set up. That is what we are actually elected to do: to represent farming communities and listen to the people on the ground. It took 70 years and this mess is still going on. We now want to solve it overnight by just bringing in rules and regulations and blaming the farmer again. The badger has more biodiversity than the people actually producing food. I find that very hurtful to my community and the farming community. At the bottom of it, there is not one word about a task force that actually helps farmers deal with the loss of all these animals. There is something seriously wrong here and it needs to be dealt with by the task force.