Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Jun 1957

Vol. 163 No. 2

Diseases of Animals (Bovine Tuberculosis) Bill, 1957—Second Stage.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Moylan)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. In introducing this measure to the House, it is hardly necessary for me to stress the importance and the magnitude of the task which confronts us in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. This is, I think, fully appreciated by Deputies on all sides of the House and has been endorsed by all sections of interested public opinion. I trust that everybody realises that complete eradication will necessarily be an arduous, a fairly long and a very costly job, requiring the full co-operation of every herd-owner in the country.

It is not an impossible job. That has already been amply demonstrated in other countries where the fight against the disease is now well advanced or has been won. In the United States of America the disease has been virtually non-existent for a good many years. Amongst European countries, Sweden and Norway were the first to become tuberculosis-free. Denmark was declared free of the disease in 1953 and Holland in 1956.

In every one of these, however, we find that victory was achieved only by a painstaking campaign lasting over a long number of years. It is probable that the United States has more resources in veterinary personnel and finance at her command than any other country, yet eradication there took over 20 years. Denmark started her campaign as far back as 1898 when it was decreed that all separated milk returned to owners for stock-feeding must be pasteurised. Further compulsory measures were introduced in dairy districts in 1932 and culminated in the complete clearance of the country 21 years later. In Holland which, though little larger in size than the province of Munster, has more veterinary surgeons in practice than we have here, the first step towards the eradication of bovine tuberculosis was taken as long ago as 1913.

Turning nearer home, our minds are now fixed on the probability that Britain will be fully attested as soon as 1960. We sometimes forget that the campaign there has also been a lengthy one. They started in 1935 when a scheme for the attestation of individual herds throughout the country was introduced, but it was not until 1950 that disease clearance on an area basis became possible. The first attested area on the mainland of Britain was declared in 1953. At the end of 1956, there were nearly 7,000,000 cattle in attested herds and attested areas in Britain, representing approximately 68 per cent. of the total.

While the desirability of embarking on the eradication of bovine tuberculosis was never lost sight of, it was not until 1950 that a pilot scheme was undertaken in the parish of Bansha, in County Tipperary, in an effort to ascertain the best approach to the problem as it exists in this country. Later, through the generosity of the United States an allocation from the Grant Counterpart Fund was promised in aid of an eradication scheme.

With this promise the Government of the day was encouraged to lay the foundation of a national scheme and it was decided to make free tuberculin testing and professional advice available to herd-owners generally throughout the country, and to provide additional incentives in three selected areas, namely, County Clare, County Sligo and "Greater Bansha". We in this country have an incentive towards tuberculosis eradication which did not operate in other countries and which should help us to reach success more swiftly. Failure to eradicate means a complete disruption of our economy.

The total number of cattle tested throughout the country by 31st October, 1956, was almost 750,000 contained in some 60,000 herds. Generally the counties of the West and NorthWest have participated most enthusiastically in the scheme and in most of those the incidence of infection was found to be comparatively light. In some other counties, in the East and Midlands, the response has been poor.

Tuberculin testing in itself is not, however, eradiction of bovine tuberculosis. The reactors when found must be got rid of as soon as possible. In order therefore to bring matters to a more practical plane it was decided to concentrate on those counties of the West—Donegal, Roscommon, Leitrim, Mayo, Galway and Kerry—in addition to Clare and Sligo—which promised to give early results. As from the 1st November, 1956, the eradication scheme with the double byre grant was confined to those counties. At the same time, pursuant to representations from the National Farmers' Association, the accredited herds scheme was introduced throughout the whole country.

It is intended to intensify the eradication measures in the western counties I have mentioned and in Cavan and Monaghan at a very early date. The necessary staff is being recruited and four additional provincial offices will be opened. I hope that very soon we can in these areas, start an intensive house to house propaganda campaign and will be in a position to start buying up reactors at full market price from every farmer who has them and who, in his own and the national interest, wants to go ahead realistically.

Before discussing further the progress that has been achieved, I think it well to refer generally to the main problems with which this country has to contend in the matter. I have already said that bovine tuberculosis eradication is going to be expensive. Already it has cost us over £1,250,000; for the current year gross expenditure on all aspects of the programme is estimated to exceed £1,580,000 and there is no doubt but that expenditure will tend to rise still more in the years immediately ahead and will continue until we have broken the back of the problem.

The Government will do all it can in regard to money and the provision of staff but this is essentially a job, the success of which rests on the full co-operation of the farmers. Each individual farmer must realise that unless he tackles his own problem now and works systematically towards the elimination of tuberculosis in his cattle he will have on his hands in three or four years' time stock which cannot be exported.

Another problem, particularly in the breeding areas, is the difficulty that will inevitably be encountered in replacing the large numbers of animals reacting to the test. To surmount this we must bring home to our farmers the urgent and vital need to concentrate on the production of healthy cattle of the right types. The ideal arrangement —at which every farmer must aim— should be the replenishment of his herd from within. As this may not, however, be practicable in every case the progressive herd-owner who produces healthy breeding stock surplus to his own requirements is likely to find a profitable outlet.

Next, there is the question of the general availability of veterinarians. The plain fact is that this country has suffered for many years past from a shortage in this profession. At present there are fewer than 400 private veterinary surgeons in active practice in country areas. This means that there is only one veterinary practitioner available for approximately 11,000 cattle in the country and that, on average, there are only about 15 resident practitioners per county. We have also the problem of some farmers who are reluctant to set about eradication in a positive way. I hope that the growth of public opinion will rectify this. It can do so more effectively than any legislation.

I must seek and secure the co-operation and goodwill of every rural organisation in the country so as to create a public opinion in favour of our effort, one that will secure a realisation of the existence of a real economic danger. I believe that such organisations could exercise a great influence in bringing home to the public the seriousness of the existing situation.

Another fundamental problem is the pasteurisation of separated milk. Some of the co-operative creameries have responded promptly to the generous offer made to them of grants from Marshall Aid Counterpart funds towards the cost of plant for this purpose but others have not reacted as vigorously as I would like. Any eradication campaign, particularly in our dairying districts where the incidence of tuberculosis is at its highest, cannot hope to succeed unless the separated milk that comes back to the farmers for feeding to young stock has been pasteurised. Without this precaution, a single farmer with a single cow giving tuberculous milk can spread the infection throughout the whole area served by his creamery.

I would ask Deputies to study the White Paper which I have circulated. In it they will find both sides of the picture; they will see what has been done already and can visualise to some extent the vast job that lies ahead. The White Paper and the accompanying statistics are comprehensive and there is, therefore, no need for me to detain the House with two much detail, but there are some points which, I think, merit special comment.

Very definite progress has undoubtedly been made in the comparatively short time that the bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme has been in operation. We have now brought over 75,000 herds containing more than 900,000 cattle under the initial tuberculin test. This represents more than 20 per cent. of all the cattle in the country. These tests have given us a clear picture of the incidence of the disease in the country as a whole and in each county. They have shown that about 17 per cent. of the entire cattle population has tuberculosis in one form or another and that while the overall disease incidence in cows is 27 per cent., only 7 per cent. of our stores are infected.

This emphasises that farmers throughout the country can do a very good deal towards elimination of the disease if they will keep the young stock segregated to the greatest possible extent from the more mature animals. If this were done and adequate standards of hygiene observed a spectacular drop in the prevalance of the disease could confidently be anticipated. A very encouraging feature is the fact that 35 per cent. of all herds initially tested throughout the country proved to be entirely free from tuberculosis. The picture is particularly good in this respect in eight counties in the West and North where the proportion of tuberculous animals varies from as low as 6 per cent. down to 4 per cent.

The response to the scheme generally has been outstandingly good in the three special areas—Clare, Sligo and Bansha—where not less than 85 per cent. of all herd-owners have voluntarily participated. This certainly augurs well for their further speedy development. It is also a welcome sign that 53 per cent of the farmers in Kerry are already in the scheme. The incidence of disease is heavy in Kerry as it is in the other dairying counties of the South—Limerick, Cork, Tipperary, Waterford. It is in these areas, which contain nearly 50 per cent. of all the cows in the country, that the greatest effort will be necessary. These are key areas and if they can be cleared of the disease the main problem of bovine tuberculosis in this country will have been solved.

The next step in the eradication scheme must therefore be to extend the intensive measures to the other Munster counties, in addition to Clare and Kerry. This will be done as rapidly as is practicable.

It is now necessary to put all our eradication measures on a full statutory basis and to have power to apply compulsion, where necessary, to those farmers who may be lagging behind and thereby negativing all the efforts that their more progressive neighbours are making. It is also necessary to have powers to regulate testing and reactor removal, pasteurisation of separated milk, and the control of markets and transit, etc. This legislation will give an assurance that our most important export market, on whose permanence we are counting, will be served by an increasing flow of cattle which can be officially certified as free of tuberculosis. It is, I feel, seldom that a Bill comes before the House which is of such vital importance to our economy and on which there is so little divergence of opinion as to its need or doubt about its urgency. It is therefore with a feeling of confidence that I commend it to the House.

Mr. Dillon

I have no hesitation in endorsing the Minister's recommendation of this Bill to the House. There is not very much that can be said, over and above what the Minsiter himself has said and what is contained in the White Paper, to demonstrate the necessity for the early enactment of this measure. There are one or two matters that may be profitably commented upon. While it is true that the expenditure which we must contemplate is formidable, Deputies should bear in mind that our whole balance of payments position is at present carried by the live-stock industry and that if we were not exporting the numbers of cattle we are exporting, this country would be burst.

I do not propose to go into an argument about the technical merits of the whole theory of eliminating bovine tuberculosis, because whatever various views may be held about the underlying philosophy of that approach, Europe and Great Britain have accepted it. We cannot get our cattle into Great Britain unless we fall into line with the general world trend. That is an utterly inescapable fact and it is the fundamental fact from our point of view.

I agree with the Minister that it is sometimes extremely difficult to make people fully realise the importance of a matter of this kind until some supreme disaster has eventuated. The object of the Minister is to prevent the occurrence of any disaster whatever, but it would be a disaster if our whole live-stock trade were disupted. The truth, of course, is that the people find it very hard to conceive a situation in which we were unable to export any store cattle at all, but that is the problem our people have to face. Unless they are prepared to support energetically this campaign to eliminate bovine tuberculosis, a day could come when our entire store cattle trade would close down and the repercussions of that upon the standard of living of our people are too appalling to contemplate. There is no need for that catastrophe to happen. If everybody will now lend a hand in the job that has to be done we can maintain the store cattle trade without disruption. The Minister is quite right when he says, however, that there is no more time to be lost. We must get on with it now.

One of the problems is the shortage of veterinary staff. The Minister says that this country has suffered for many years past from a shortage in this profession. I think that statement requires to be elaborated. It is true that for the last seven or eight years we have experienced an acute shortage but prior to that there was not a shortage. Veterinary science has made such progress in the last 15 or 20 years and the value of live stock has increased so substantially that the services of the veterinary surgeons are invoked much more often and there is much more for them to do. If we had as many veterinary surgeons 25 years ago as we have to-day half of them would be unable to earn a living. Now with the campaign against mastitis, contagious abortion, parasitic diseases and bovine tuberculosis itself, our requirements in veterinary personnel have undoubtedly increased more rapidly than the faculty are turning out veterinary surgeons.

It is true, however, that we can secure from certain of the existing veterinary surgeons, such as those who are engaged in the meat factories and bacon factories, additions to our available veterinary officers for this bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme. I am rather surprised the Minister did not make some reference to plans to squeeze out of the existing veterinary personnel that we dispose of in the Department some additional veterinary surgeons for the purpose of this eradication scheme. I cannot doubt that in any plan to do that he will secure the full co-operation of the veterinary profession.

While I was Minister for Agriculture I had on occasion to consult the profession and invite their assistance, and they on occasion consulted me and asked for my help. I am happy to recollect that our relations were cordial. We were able to meet one another and where they wanted help I was able to provide it and where I wanted help they most generously provided it. I feel sure that, if the co-operation of the profession is required in facilitating the mobilisation of veterinary surgeons from the meat factories and the substitution there of lay inspectors for certain routine duties that have hitherto fallen within the ambit of the veterinary profession's competence, that co-operation will be forthcoming from the profession. I certainly would be greatly shocked if there was any reluctance on their part to help the Minister in this matter because nobody must know better than they do the urgency and importance of the work to which he is putting his hand.

I come now to the matter of the pasteurisation of milk. The time has come when we are justified in saying to the creamery societies that there must be a time limit. There is no use pretending that this matter is urgent if we see a potent source of infection and of recurrent infection such as tubercular skim milk, so that one farmer can contaminate the milk of an entire creamery, and yet fix no time for the industry to establish the only real safeguard against the dissemination of this disease amongst all the cattle in the land, that is, pasteurisation, because, no matter what care you take about the incoming supply, the fallibility of one supplier may contaminate the bulk of the skim milk distributed by that creamery.

Therefore, your only security against human fallibility, or any other source of evil, is to take the entire skim milk in the creamery and pasteurise it before it is returned to the farmers for feeding to live stock. I think the Minister makes a mistake in not saying: "And after 1960"—or whatever date he may decide upon—"I think it right to fix all with notice that I will have to consider the question of licensing any creamery for continued operation which is not equipped to pasteurise its skim milk."

We all appreciate the difficulties and problems of the small co-operative society and we are all prepared to help them and to give them 50 per cent. of the cost. I have never known a small creamery society to be refused a loan, if it wanted it, to carry out works of this kind. If the small society replies to the Minister that all their resources will not permit them to do this, then I think we have got to contemplate a further step. I have always believed in the small society and in maintaining its independence. It has a great social value for the community for which it caters; but if a situation arises in which these small societies are obliged to say to the Minister: "Our capital resources will not permit us to do that which is essential"—and I do not think that will arise in many cases— then I certainly would be obliged to change my mind in respect of the matter of their survival as independent units and recommend them, if that were so, to combine their resources with some neighbouring society so that together they might be able to do that which in continued independence would be beyond their resources.

The essential thing is, if we want an atmosphere of urgency to penetrate to the people, to say to the creamery societies that there is a time limit beyond which they cannot continue to function without facilities for pasteurising skim milk returned to their suppliers.

There is one other advice I want to give the Minister. I cannot discern clearly from the statement he has made when and how he will expand the intensive measures to Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Roscommon, Cavan and Monaghan. My recollection is, but I would not swear to this, that before I left the Department, we had decided to treat these counties on the same basis as that on which we were treating Sligo and Clare.

Mr. Moylan

Which areas?

Mr. Dillon

Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan. I think that ought to be done, and I think it ought to be done now. I have been in close contact with this problem for a long time and, fundamentally, the essential procedure for the expeditious resolution of this problem is to eliminate the reactor. That may sound like heresy, but it really is not because, when you come to study this problem closely, you will find people proposing all sorts of schemes of inducement and roundabout plans, all of which cost oceans of money. The real truth is that if you can get every farmer to have his herd tested and to say to the Department of Agriculture: "Take every reactor away and dispose of it", that is the way in which to eliminate all this.

Mr. Moher

To eliminate the cattle population.

Mr. Dillon

Deputy Moher was probably not here yesterday when I said the problem in Limerick, Cork, Kerry and West Tipperary is appalling, but he is quite mistaken in imagining that its resolution would do anything like eliminating the cattle population in the areas I have just mentioned to the Minister. The incidence of tuberculosis in those areas is relatively low and we could eradicate it there quite easily and without any very serious problem at all.

I can only refer Deputy Moher, and it is worth his while looking at it, to pages 16 and 17 of the White Paper the Minister has circulated, in which all the statistical material appears. He will find there that the percentage of reactors in the area represented by Clare, Galway, Mayo, Donegal, Sligo, Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan and Monaghan makes it quite possible to contemplate the removal of all reactors forthwith, and it would have this immense advantage, that if one got a substantial eradication of tuberculosis in that area, 90 per cent. of the problem in Limerick, Kerry, Cork and Tipperary would disappear, because the areas in which it would be eradicated could become a reservoir from which replacements could be drawn for the herds in counties where there is a high incidence of disease.

I have a long experience of Deputy Moher. He is a person whose judgment I do not always respect very highly, but whose intervention in debate is always very helpful. I beg of him not to get up in the course of this debate to explain to the House that nothing can be done. I do assure him that the Minister is only too well seized of all the difficulties; he lives with them and spends much of his time trying to resolve them. There is no question as to whether this can or cannot be done. It must be done. If Deputy Moher intervenes in this debate, I would urge on him that it is no use getting up and saying: "This represents a decimation or an elimination of the cattle population of the four south-western counties." Rather, I would urge him to take a more optimistic view and make suggestions, if he knows of any, whereby the job can be done in these four counties. I am convinced that if the Minister now adopts a radical approach in the western counties to which I have referred and in Cavan and Monaghan, we can build up there a reservoir of replacements which will cater for the replacements problem, which appals Deputy Moher, in Limerick, Tipperary, Cork and Kerry.

Mr. Moher

I might be appalled for some other reason that the Deputy does not realise.

Mr. Dillon

I do not think so. Deputy Moher is always most instructive and most helpful, sometimes at appalling length. Still, I have always found his contribution valuable. He knows the part of the world from which he comes well. This problem is of course one in relation to the whole question which faces the country. I ask the Minister to do three things. I think a time limit should be set in respect of the equipment of creameries for pasteurising skim milk; secondly, I should like him to be more explicit on the measures he proposes to take in these counties he mentioned in his speech; and, thirdly, I should be glad to hear from him if he shares my view that, in the last analysis, the important thing is to get the reactors out and dispose of them.

I want to say—because this kind of thing can do great mischief—you hear some people talking—and, indeed, some people who ought to know better —about farmers being permitted and even encouraged to sell reactors. The plain truth, which is known to us all, is that 80 per cent. of the reactors never develop clinical tuberculosis at all and never would, but you never know which of the reactors belong to the 20 per cent. that will or which belong to the 80 per cent. that never will; but if there was no scheme of testing, cattle would be brought out in the public market and sold and everybody would take his chance.

There is no country in the world which has been able to slaughter all the reactors at the same time, for the simple reason that it would create, in an acute form, the problem to which Deputy Moher has referred, that of replacement, so that in the interim period, the right procedure is for farmers to dispose of reactors by sale or otherwise, but where intensive eradication is proceeding—and it ought to proceed as quickly as possible—I think the right procedure is for the Department to take the reactors, slaughter them and dispose of them. I believe that reflection will persuade the Minister that unless that is done, and done now in the eight or nine counties to which I have referred, there is no answer to the problem Deputy Moher has raised, the problem of replacement in the areas where the incidence is high.

However, I share the Minister's optimism of our capacity to deal with this problem, but I endorse his statement that, unless everybody is prepared to lend a hand in the matter, his exertions, however great, cannot succeed. I want to make it as clear as I possibly can to the live-stock owners of the country that their survival depends on making this bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme a success and I say to them with the fullest deliberation that, should this scheme fail, it is not only possible but highly probable that the live-stock cattle industry of the country will come to a standstill. That is a catastrophe none of us can even afford to contemplate. We have the time and we have the resources to avoid that, and if that catastrophe comes upon us, we have nobody but ourselves to blame. We must make the best effort we can here and now. I have no doubt the Minister and his Department will do their part. I hope that the N.F.A., Macra na Feirme and Macra na Tuatha will do their part. They have talked quite enough about this business: the time has now come to do something and the best way they could help would be to come to the Minister for Agriculture and ask him: "What do you want us to do?" and then go and do it.

There is no use in having 45 admirals on the bridge of one ship or 62 generals commanding one army and you cannot have 35 Ministers for Agriculture. Somebody must do the job and this House has chosen Senator Moylan to be Minister for Agriculture for the time being. We may like him, or we may dislike him, but there he is, and he is Minister for Agriculture. Somebody has to direct the campaign for the eradication of tuberculosis and if he is not the man to do it in the circumstances, I do not know who is. I think our people are sometimes slow to learn that it is a good thing in a free society to conduct vigorous and energetic debates until the issue is decided and then when it is decided, that the decision should be accepted by all and it should be their concern to give all the help they can to the achievement of the agreed objective.

There will be plenty of people—I even see Deputy Moher's eyes flashing —who will say that the plans prepared by the Minister are not the right ones or are not adequate. I am saying that myself now because this is the time for debate and resolution of the various views we have to express, but I want to add this, and I address these words with very special reference to the farming organisations of the country: there must be an end of debate some time and this is the ultimate place where decisions have to be taken and when they are taken, Senator Moylan, Minister for Agriculture, is the person who will have to give executive effect to them.

When settlement has been reached in this House, I can assure him of hearty and cordial support for his efforts from this side of the House, and on behalf of the live-stock industry as a whole I bespeak the same measure of support from the agricultural organisations here. I have no hesitation in saying in public that they have a very grave duty to take off their coats and go into this campaign with all the energies at their disposal.

I have read this Bill. I need hardly tell the Minister I am not unfamiliar with the background of it. If these are the powers the Minister requires to grapple with this problem, I think he should get them. I have not so far found anything which I feel may require amendment on Committee, but possibly in the course of this Second Stage debate, certain matters may emerge in respect of which it may be thought desirable to propose amendments.

If that necessity arises, I have no doubt they will be sympathetically considered by the Minister, but, as to the principle of the Bill, I recommend it to Dáil Éireann, and as to co-operation in completing this work, I emphatically endorse what the Minister has said, that, no matter what money the Government provides, no matter what energy and zeal the Minister employs, success cannot be achieved without the co-operation of every live-stock owner and every farmer, every veterinary surgeon and every agricultural organisation. If any of them fail in their duty in this matter, they will have a very serious responsibility to answer for.

Mr. Moher

I would not for one moment presume to know as much about the cattle economy of the West of Ireland or the areas in which compulsory testing is now in operation as Deputy Dillon does. Neither would I try to convey that the problem is as simple as Deputy Dillon would have us believe. Coming from the heart of a dairying area and having been associated with dairying in that area for the greater part of my life, I know what the problem is. One has only to go to the weekly market in any of the towns in the South in my constituency and, indeed, in the Minister's constituency, at a certain time of the year to see the enormous number of calves which are sold in those markets. I am aware, and I think Deputy Dillon is also aware, that a high proportion of the calves bought in the South go into the counties where compulsory testing has been in operation. These calves, if tested, probably would be reactors.

The economy in the West of Ireland is not a creamery economy. Cows kept there are not kept for the purpose of supplying milk to creameries; they are kept for the purpose of rearing calves. They are what I once described in this House as sucker calves. It is part of the cattle economy in those areas that these cows are kept for the purpose of rearing calves and raising young stock. That being so, I am sure the Deputy will agree that the sensible thing to do would be to prevent the movement of those calves into that area.

Straightway, you are faced with a fundamental problem. You disrupt the cattle economy of that area. If you prevent the movement of young calves into the area, it means a diminution in the number of live stock raised on the small farms there and straightway there is a major problem to be faced. You cannot segregate an area and say that that area is wholly independent. The cattle economy of the West of Ireland is very dependent on the movement of dropped calves, or calves a week or a month old from the southern markets and fairs.

These are problems which we have got to face up to and the solution of which is not simple. I know what the problem is and I know how great and how utter has been our failure so far in regard to general testing in the South. I am sure that no one here will deny that an enormous amount of money has been spent on bovine tuberculosis and testing dairy herds in the South, but there has not been commensurate elimination. There are very few herds totally free of bovine tuberculosis in the South. Yet, I am sure the former Minister will not deny that an enormous amount of money has been spent in veterinary fees for the testing of cattle herds in the South. All we can say is that we have established an approximate percentage of reactors in the South for the enormous amount of money expended in veterinary fees.

That expenditure is not worth a snap of the fingers to us because, if a test was done 12 or six months ago, if we intend to eliminate reactors, we should proceed to do it all over again. To my knowledge, veterinary surgeons have gone into dairy farms in the South and, having tested dairy cows, have informed the farmer that he has eight out of 12 or 10 out of 12 reactors, and the farmer just says: "What can I do?" The veterinary surgeon went away; the farmer did nothing; the veterinary surgeon collected his fee from the Department and the last state was worse than the first.

Mr. Dillon

Tell us what you would do.

Mr. Moher

If the Deputy will allow me, I will make a suggestion.

Mr. Dillon

Good.

Mr. Moher

I thought from the beginning, as far as general testing was concerned, that it was bound to fail. You cannot draw up a scheme in an office in Merrion Street and call in the representatives of the Veterinary Medical Association and discuss it with them and leave the farmers outside the pale. I thought it was bound to fail because, if we are to eliminate bovine tuberculosis, the first thing we want is the co-operation of every dairy farmer in the South. We did not go out to get it. I thought that where we failed was that we did not go to the co-operative societies and get all the farmers in the South to co-operate. The tests were carried out. They were canvassed mainly by the veterinary practitioner in the area and nothing further was done about it. Very little advice was given.

While all this expenditure was being incurred in the South, while vets were running here and there testing and making a rather lucrative business of it, many creameries with five, six and eight branches, had not a solitary skim milk pasteuriser installed. The veterinary surgeon knew that a prerequisite in the elmination of bovine tuberculosis was pasteurisation of skim milk. If tomorrow we were to install a pasteuriser in every central and branch creamery, there would still be a problem; there would still be need for co-operation. As anyone who knows anything about dairying in the South is aware, there is a six to eight week period in which calves are fed on whole new milk. It would be of little use to feed pasteurised skim milk at the end of eight weeks if the calf had been already infected by having been fed, in the first two-month period, new milk from reactor cows.

Farmers must be educated to organise the whole business on the basis that from the time the calf is dropped it should be fed from the milk of non-reactor cows. If the farmer has had a test done, he is probably aware that there are six or eight cows in the herd that are known reactors and that the wise thing for him to do is to feed the calf during the first eight-week period with whole milk from non-reactor cows and to ensure that milk from known reactors is not fed to calves at the early stage. One has to live with the problem to know it. If we act in a common-sense way, we can save millions; if we do not, we can waste millions. The low density of our cattle population in the West will not give us the clearance we must have in a given time if, at the same time, the problem is not faced in the South. It is from the South will come the bulk of our store cattle population. If we cannot make spectacular headway in the elimination of bovine tuberculosis in the South, we are bound to get caught.

The Minister gave figures of the length of time it has taken in countries which have completely eliminated bovine tuberculosis. Many of these people were pioneers in this field and we have the advantage that we can learn by their mistakes and not run into their pitfalls. I do not agree with the ex-Minister when he says that the only way to solve the problem is by the ruthless elimination of all reactors——

Mr. Dillon

In the nine counties.

Mr. Moher

I am arguing that the problem must be solved mainly in the South. The nine counties are only a small factor when it comes to the provision of stores and fat cattle for export to Britain. The biggest factor is the breeding area in the South. From there must come, as they have always come, the bulk of our store cattle and ultimately our fat cattle.

The ex-Minister is well aware of the speed at which the British cordon sanitaire is spreading out against us. Something between 65 per cent. and 68 per cent. of the total British cattle population is free from bovine tuberculosis. When I was over there last October, the county veterinary supervisors told me that they hoped to have the entire country clear within five years. I believe they will. If we are to repeat the mistakes we have made up to now as far as the general area in the South is concerned, how far will we have got in five years? I know that the British feeders want our stores and British officials are very alarmed at our position in regard to the clearance of this disease. The key to the problem is to breed tuberculosis free replacements on all dairy farms.

I do not agree with the ex-Minister that we can afford this ruthless elimination. I believe that, to a very great extent, we can do the job by segregation. There are many farms which lend themselves to segregation of reactors from those cattle which have passed the test. I believe many of our farmers could breed from reactors sound, non-reactor replacements. Of course, a number of questions have to be considered. In the drier areas in the South, in the limestone strata areas, we could de-house reactors. It has been done. The de-housing of reactors would be the sensible thing to do on the particular farms in which the physical conditions lend themselves to that kind of cow husbandry. There is also the question of proper water supplies. Water is a factor, too. Many farms suffer from wholly inadequate water supplies. Many farms have no running water and many have no water supplies at all, except stagnant water in pools. In those farms, you will have a recurring problem.

I was informed by people on the other side that even 9 per cent. of our once-tested cattle react on second test on the other side. That has given rise to an order for isolation for 60 days until a second test is carried out. We know that once-tested Irish cattle pass through the same lairages and are transferred through the same ports and in the same boats as non-tested cattle. These are all problems which have a bearing on the elimination of tuberculosis and the export of attested cattle.

I believe that the vets can do the technical end but in the main, it is the farmers, the dairy farmers and the organised farmers, such as N.F.A., Macra na Feirme and the co-operative societies who are the people to do the job. If there is an educated and intelligent approach to the matter, I believe it can be done; but I do not believe we can do it in any shorter time than the countries who have freed themselves of this disease.

Anybody who knows our set-up here will know that fairs will be a problem. The control and movement of cattle will be very awkward. Let us hope that developments which are now taking place will have reached the stage where we may be able to do something to reorganise our fair system.

One has a certain amount of sympathy with the dairy farmer. He is being called upon in this instance to carry a very great burden. The question of compensation is not the whole picture. You know what happens; you have a herd of cows which you have built up, a herd which you have graded up to 800 or 900 gallons. Suddenly, you have a test and you have to eliminate them. You may have to start again with a tuberculin tested cow that would be a scrub cow. The economy of the dairy farmer is assailed straight away and the whole thing is set at nought.

What contribution has been or will be asked from the grazing and beef interests in this country? A speech was made in the Seanad some years ago, I think, by Professor Johnston, in which it was suggested that a levy should be put on beef to help dairying, and we know what happened.

Mr. Dillon

Now you remember the salmon levy.

Mr. Moher

I do not claim to have any veterinary knowledge, except the ordinary knowledge of a person associated with the raising of live stock, but I do believe that not all reactors under the present tuberculin test are transmitters of the disease and I should like to see the veterinary surgeons going further and making an examination of this position. I know that there are a number of cattle which are potent sources for spreading the disease and, as well as the ordinary clinical reactors, there are a number of cattle that are pulmonary cases. A pulmonary cow in a herd will infect the whole herd and will infect any cattle with which she comes in contact.

The question of housing is also an important factor and the present system is something which, in the final analysis, we can hardly justify. In many cases before the foundations of some of these houses are laid the type is completely obsolete and to my mind the whole building programme should be reviewed. The open yard or shed should be encouraged and on the larger dairy farms, where there is a scarcity of labour, the Department should review the whole cow byre building programme and make grants available for the open shed.

I think the orthodox house is obsolete and in ten years' time it will not be used. These houses are built in such a way that in many cases it would appear that those who erected them were afraid of the air. The shed is much better. From what I have been told, the houses in the West of Ireland, where you have the lowest reactor rate, are of the old shack-shed type. In many cases where you have the well built stone cow house you have a much higher percentage of reactors. This whole problem of housing cattle should be re-examined and a much simpler, cheaper and open hygienic house should be developed in which even the temperature is very much the same inside as outside.

The open yard should be encouraged, in particular where you have the larger dairy herds. If the open yard system is studied you will find that cows are animals which do not seek much comfort. If we study animal psychology, we will see that they like cleanliness. If you have a clean yard and give a herd of cows their freedom, you will find that in an average winter they will spend much more time, of their own choice, out of doors than in the cow byre or in the shed. A prerequisite to bovine tuberculosis testing is the provision of a sanitary cow byre in every dairy farm. That is an absolute prerequisite and the shape that cow byre must take is something which we should decide now. A great amount of money has been locked up in cold concrete and I think the farm building supervisors who supervise the building of these structures should be brought in and given a course on farm architecture and planning.

If one studies the average dairy farm in the South one will see that there no plan whatever was followed and that houses are scattered here and there. I think we have failed from the beginning in this regard although we have spent an enormous amount of money. There was no plan and the supervisors were not in a position to say to the farmer: "Erect that house here, from the labour saving angle; put a hay-barn there and a silo in such a place". Instead of that you will find a most wasteful set-up from every angle because no attempt at planning has been made. If a cow byre is a necessity to-day a shed or some other structure will be a necessity in one or two years' time. We must try to have an overall plan. While our farm building supervisors do a good job with the knowledge that they have I feel we are missing a lot.

I ask the Minister to have this whole position reviewed and to try to get a common-sense approach to it. In view of our present financial position we are not approaching the problem in a sensible way. Organisation will mean a difference of millions of pounds. You cannot operate a scheme drawn up here in Government Buildings and hand it out to the Veterinary Association. You will have to go down the country and get the co-operative societies and every group of organised farmers to come out and do their own job. These people have been on the fence for a long time. They call upon somebody else to do the job and then criticise it. Let us now say: "Get off the fence and come in and kick the ball".

Mr. Hughes

I think every Deputy realises the importance of this Bill. I am quite sure the Minister will have every support possible in getting on with the task of eradicating bovine tuberculosis. The farmers fully realise the importance of it. One development has arisen in the last year or two. We were told that Britain was moving so fast with this scheme that our store cattle trade would disappear if we did not get moving. Now that situation has arisen. Practically 70 per cent. of Britain has been declared clear of bovine tuberculosis and it is expected that it will be completely clear within the next five or six years. The fact that it is has not so far affected our store trade has made our farmers indifferent about the scheme. I think we will have to change that view.

The British Government will not spend huge sums on eradicating bovine tuberculosis and then allow our cattle in untested. The present modified scheme of a single test is valueless as far as they are concerned. If they could find an alternative supply of stores we would be up against it. It is the duty of every Deputy to make the farmers realise the importance of eradicating bovine tuberculosis.

I am inclined to be a little bit critical of the manner in which our bovine tuberculosis eradication scheme has been handled so far. I am just an ordinary farmer, but I should like to put a few points to the Minister about it. I am inclined to agree with Deputy Moher's point of view. I think the problem lies in the areas where our young stores are bred, the dairying areas. We have gone into some counties already and it is proposed to go into Donegal, Kerry, Leitrim, Mayo and Roscommon. I think the Department are afraid to face the problem at its centre. They are getting away to the counties where there is the least amount of bovine tuberculosis. It is absolutely necessary, I think, to get into the creamery areas, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork and Kerry. Those are the counties which supply all the calves to the other parts of the country. They supply the dropped calves and there is a big trade in calves in the autumn. If the problem is not tackled in those counties and if we work only around the outside fringe we will get nowhere. It will be more expensive to put the scheme in operation in those counties, but it will have to be done.

It is well known that the incidence of tuberculosis among cattle is much higher in those counties. I am not inclined to agree with Deputy Moher when he talks about improving the housing of cows in those areas. A good many farmers in those areas do not house them at all. They allow them to stay out during the winter.

Mr. Moher

They are better off than in those houses.

Mr. Hughes

It has the effect though of creating more tuberculosis. It is bad for a cow in poor condition to lie out on a wet night. There is much more tuberculosis under such conditions. I think it is evading the problem if the scheme is not put into operation in those areas first. I should like the Minister to tell us when he is replying why his experts have advised him to keep out of those areas. To the ordinary man it would seem to be the proper approach to go into these areas because these areas are suppliers for the whole country. People in these areas breed the calves but they do not rear them except for a short period. Of course the pasteurisation of milk is very closely associated with the situation and, as Deputy Moher referred to it, it is true that these areas supply most of the milk for cheese making.

The bovine tuberculosis scheme is working only on the outside fringe, in the areas which get their calves from the dairying areas. That seems extraordinary. Possibly there is some technical explanation for it but, as a farmer, I cannot see it is the proper approach at all. It will definitely cost more money to go into the creamery areas and progress may be slow but it will be the proper approach.

I am sure the Department's officials have studied the British scheme and how it works. I know there have been a great many loopholes in the British scheme and some smart fellows have made a lot of money through it. I think the British scheme can be of great value to the Department if the officials study it closely and see where the loopholes are. I am told that some people can make a lot of money out of it. You will have a certain number of those people in our own community who will be out to do that, but it is up to the Department to see that it does not happen. It would have a very demoralising effect on a genuine farmer, who tries to get his herd free of bovine tuberculosis, to find that there may be a smart fellow beside him getting easy money out of the scheme.

Our scheme has certain loopholes and we cannot compare our farmers with the British people who do not seem to mind spending millions of pounds on any scheme they operate. We cannot afford to spend so much money. There should be a very close study made of the British scheme, which has been in operation for the last ten years, so that all of the pitfalls that are there can be corrected and put right in our scheme. It is something we must proceed with immediately. We must get the complete co-operation of the farmers who must be made realise the importance of it.

This is a problem which is very serious for every section of our people. If there is any danger of our live-stock trade disappearing, and our store trade especially, the whole economy of our country will be badly upset. We had a balance of payments problem a year ago and the improvements in the trade in live stock gradually helped to put that right. If we find our trade disappearing off the British market, as far as our stores are concerned, it will be pretty serious. In the last year or so we have been threatened with this situation according as the various parts of Britain were cleared.

I believe there is a certain amount of indifference amongst the farmers in this country who think that the present system will continue, and that we shall not be faced with this problem. According as various parts of Britain are cleared, the remaining area gets smaller and we will have more difficulty in getting our stores exported.

We will have to get on with this scheme in a very serious way. Why do we not approach this from the point of view of the areas where our young stores are bred, the dairying districts of the South? Every Deputy knows that is the breeding ground of all our young stores, calves and very young cattle, and that they are supplied from these areas to the remainder of the country. They are all bred there and then spread out over the country. It seems to me that that is the place into which to go, that we must get in there and clear it up completely. The remainder of the job will then be easy.

If our young stores are cleared of tuberculosis in the very early stages, then, in all probability, they will carry on. However, if you have a cleared area such as Roscommon or Leitrim, and the people there continue to get their stores, calves, yearlings, and so on, from the South—as they are getting them all the time from Limerick, Tipperary and the other creamery areas— it seems to me to be a completely wrong approach.

I do not wish to be critical of the Bill as I am very anxious for its success. I am just giving an ordinary man's view. I should like to know why the Department and the Minister have seemingly got away completely from this area where I believe we should make a start.

Mr. P.J. Burke

I welcome this Bill, and before I start to speak on it, I want to avail of the opportunity to wish the Minister for Agriculture luck in his new appointment. He has a big job of work to do and in this scheme he deserves the co-operation of all public men and everybody else in the country.

This Bill concerns every person in the nation. If we lose our cattle trade, every citizen will be affected. This is a national problem. There is a challenge to us to eliminate bovine tuberculosis, and if we fail the nation will suffer. Every farmer, big and small, should take this matter up seriously and bear in mind that there is a challenge to the survival of one of our biggest export trades and any farmer who fails to co-operate fully is not a friend of the nation.

In going out to other counties and trying to eliminate bovine tuberculosis where there are not many instances of it, I am not satisfied the Department of Agriculture will cure the problem. I agree with Deputy Hughes that if we have a problem or an outbreak of any type of disease in the country, we must go into the area where it is worst, no matter what the consequences, and being up against it, we must ask for the co-operation of all the people concerned. Even if the Minister had the power of waving a magic wand in this connection, unless he gets the whole-hearted and intelligent co-operation of the community, his work will go for nothing.

The Minister and the Department should concentrate on the areas which are most heavily affected and see what can be done. It is all very well to talk about eliminating the disease in the other counties, but there is very little use in eliminating it in such counties, if the disease is allowed to continue in the South because, no matter what restrictions may be imposed on the movement of cattle, there are always ways and means of smuggling. People who act in that way are acting against the interests of the nation.

I make a final appeal to the Irish farmers to give their whole-hearted co-operation to the Minister in his effort to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. The problem is so serious that it affects the survival of our cattle trade. The pasteurisation of milk in the dairying areas should not be a very difficult task. If the milk were boiled, it would at least have the effect of killing the germs, apart altogether from the provision of a pasteurisation machine. It is only a question of putting it off and letting someone else do the job. The position is serious as only a few more years remain and if we do not catch up on the task in that period, the result will be too bad for us.

This nation owes a good deal to intelligent farmers who tackled this problem themselves over a long period. We owe a lot to farmers who were intelligent enough to know how necessary it was to provide proper houses for their cattle and proper drinking water for them, too. Those farmers have contributed a good deal to the elimination of bovine tuberculosis and are worthy of the highest praise of the nation.

I have already said that this is a matter which concerns everybody and that the farmers who fail to co-operate with the Minister are failing the nation. We must have a national effort to eradicate this disease, and I hope the people concerned will do everything they can and that the Department's veterinary surgeons will go into those areas which are most seriously affected.

Mr. T. Lynch

I expected Deputy Moher to give more of a direction to the Minister than he did. However, he very rightly pointed to the importance of his area and the southern counties where the majority of our cattle are bred. There has been alarm at the figures published in the White Paper containing returns from these counties. There are up to 38 per cent. reactors in all animals in County Limerick and 31 per cent. in Cork. I sympathise with the Minister in his task, as he has a frightful problem on his hands.

I want to go back about 25 years and consider the position then—I am not talking about what the Government did, or anything like that—in the area around Waterford City. At that time, three people there went in for tuberculin testing. There was no Government aid for them. The job had to be done at their own expense and at their own risk. These three people got a shock—they had three very good herds of cows—when they discovered that in one case a man with 48 cows had 16 reactors; in the second case, a man with 37 cows had 11 reactors; and in the third case, a man with, I think, 35 cows had 15 reactors. Not as much was known in those days about tuberculin testing as is known now.

I am disappointed that we have not heard from more of the agricultural experts who used to speak from the Opposition Benches when we were in Government, who spent three years "hollering" about agriculture when members of the inter-Party Government were sitting behind the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon. I am very proud of the Party to which I belong, when I see the manner in which they are receiving this Bill and the manner in which they are offering co-operation to the Minister. I am quite sure that, if his predecessor were introducing this Bill, it would not be received in the same manner by the members of Fianna Fáil.

To go back to this problem and the experience of those three men in my area, for the benefit of those agricultural experts who deeply resent it whenever I rise to speak on agriculture, I may say I happen to be one of those people—and we made a success of it. The only thing wrong was that when we had eliminated tuberculosis, we were into the economic war—so we will pass over that. I say that in order to explain to the House and to the Minister that I had some little experience in this respect and I paid for it out of my own pocket.

One of the things on which I must agree with Deputy Moher—and this is another great problem which the Minister has to face—is that when you go into the dairying areas in the South and when a man has his cows tested, it is nearly always as true as day following night that all his cows will react. That is the desperate problem which faces the Minister. I am not bringing that up in order to embarrass him in any way, but I think it is important. I agree with Deputy Moher there. I do not agree with him in his view about reactors. When testing has taken place and a man has reactors— and this is a hard thing to say—the reactors must go.

It is not as bad as it was in my time. I am glad to see in this Bill—and I read it very carefully and this must be said for the Minister and his Department—that the part of the Bill which covers compensation is generously made out. If there is a challenge about the valuation, the farmer can appeal to the Minister, and I have no doubt that if an injustice is done to the farmer and he appeals, the Minister will see that he gets justice. I have no doubt the officers of the Department will ensure that. The manner in which this Bill must be put into operation, as far as compensation is concerned, is that it must be done generously and must be done quickly.

There will be people who will "pull fast ones". I will give the Minister this promise: if I heard of any such, I will report them to the Minister. However, I will not come into the House to try to smear the Minister or his Department or the Act. We should put that kind of thing behind us and, as Deputies, when this Bill has been passed, we all should become the Minister's agents, to help him in every possible way in our own areas.

In the matter of sheds, it is true that a lot of tuberculosis is caused by the housing of calves in stuffy and ill-ventilated sheds. When these calves eventually are put out, they have no resistance to chills and they quickly become tuberculous. They breed it in themselves. Deputy Moher has a point there. There should be a standard for ventilation of calf-houses. There should be a standard for ventilation of cow-houses also. I agree with him that the temperature in cow-houses should, if possible, be the same as outside, but without draughts and with a dry lie for the cows. I attribute a good deal of the tuberculosis to cows being left out the whole time. If the weather gets bad, they are there standing under ditches with the rain pouring down on them. They are open to chills and go off condition; and they are bound to become an easy prey to tuberculosis.

The British say they will be ready with this in 1960. "The best laid plans of mice and men"—let us say they might not be ready with it until 1962. That would give us about five years. It is a big job to take on in five years. I do not think it can be done in five years, but an enormous amount can be done. The suggestion I make to the Minister is that it should be canvassed with the various organisations mentioned here—the N.F.A., Macra na Feirme, the co-operative societies, and so on—to show them that they will be compensated. We should make a start in the breeding areas and get as many people as possible into tuberculin testing as quickly as possible. If that is not done, I do not know in what other way it can be done, except by having all the cattle compulsorily tested and then having the reactors done away with. That would be a frightful thing and, I think, would be impossible.

Deputy Moher said something about its being mentioned in the Seanad that there should be a levy put on the beef cattle. I say here and now that when anything is shipped and exported from this country, we should have no levy on it, whether for bovine tuberculosis or anything else. I think I have agreement on nearly all sides of the House with that. We must realise that the Government is about to spend a whole lot of money in an endeavour to make this country tuberculin free, the idea behind it being that we can have a store cattle trade and a beef cattle trade with England. Then we have a Deputy talking, on the same Bill, about putting a levy on the export of animals. That should never be thought of.

Mr. Hilliard

He did not say it at all. He said that someone else said it —Professor Johnston in the Seanad.

Mr. T. Lynch

I beg the Deputy's pardon. He said the dairymen should not be called upon to bear the whole cost of this.

Mr. Hilliard

If the Deputy looks at the official record, he will find that Deputy Moher did not say what the Deputy suggests. The Deputy is misquoting him.

Mr. T. Lynch

I hope he did not say it. I take it from what Deputy Hilliard is saying now that he is not agreeing with him, that he believes there should be no levy.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There is nothing about it in the Bill.

Mr. T. Lynch

I know that, but I understood it was stated in the House and it was a matter of some alarm to me. In the matter of the breeding counties again, if this is not done, goodness knows what will happen all their fine fairs down there. They have some of the finest calf markets in the whole country in these areas at which calves are bought every week and sent all over the country.

It would be a double-edged weapon if anything happened to stop that fine business because it would be a great hardship on those in the breeding areas who are in the habit of selling their calves and who look to these places for their supply. Let me repeat that every member of this House and every member of Seanad Eireann should be the Minister's agents, when this Bill goes through. They should do everything possible in their areas to help him and his officers and keep them in touch with the situation and advise them of anything they think they should be made aware of.

Mr. Wycherley

I feel that the Department of Agriculture are evading their responsibilities in this matter when they confine their activities to the areas where the tuberculosis incidence is lowest. I must be prepared to offer an alternative view to that expressed already. To get at the root of this trouble, we must start with the young heifers up to two years old which are to be the foundation stock of this country in two, three and four years' time.

I know it would be impossible for the Department of Agriculture to compensate all the farmers in Cork, Kerry and the various other dairying counties for all their reactors, but this is a national problem which must be approached from a national angle. In doing so, I think the Department should treat the industry on an extended basis all over the country and not in intensive areas as suggested. It should be treated all over the country by having every heifer tested for tuberculosis and the reactors branded so that every farmer going to a fair would be in a position to purchase a heifer which he knows has passed the tuberculin test.

All this T.B. testing should be a national charge and free to the farmers. The whole business must be national and above reproach in every respect so that the farmers can always rest assured that they will buy into their herds a T.B.-free heifer as the foundation stock of the future. I have no hesitation in saying that the farmers would be quite prepared to sell off their own reactors in their own good time provided they had the opportunity of purchasing a heifer of one, two or three years which passed a tuberculin test. If that scheme were implemented all over the country, the yearlings and two-year-olds of to-day would be the herds, large and small, in five years' time. I have no hesitation in saying that we would, to a very great extent indeed, have T.B.-free cattle in this country.

There may be isolated cases—there always will be—but on the whole I feel it would be a far better approach to the whole business than the present very narrow approach in a few isolated areas. The percentage of tuberculosis in our young cattle is indeed not alarming. It is only 7 per cent. If we attack the incidence of tuberculosis in our young cattle which constitute only 7 per cent. at the moment it would be much more economical and advantageous to the country as a whole than the present scheme which will cost millions and will take a very long number of years indeed before the whole country is covered.

We are in a very different position in this country from that in England or in any other country for that matter. The British import cattle and it is up to them to import whatever type of cattle they want and whatever type suits them best. We are an exporting country and it would not be well to say that we would just export from the few areas which have passed as being T.B. free. We must export our cattle from all over the country. This being a national problem, I really think we should approach it in a national way and treat all our farmers alike.

If we treat them all alike, and give all of them the same opportunities, I have no doubt that the farming organisations and the co-operative societies will all combine, lend a hand and put their strength behind the Minister and the Department of Agriculture in the elimination of this great scourge. If we are to deal with the problem in piecemeal fashion, the same enthusiasm and the same competition will not exist. I feel that the present approach is wrong because some farmers in those areas will benefit while the farmers down the country producing the young stores, maiden heifers, the future herds of this country, are not getting the same opportunity to get rid of bovine tuberculosis.

Every farmer in this country is entitled to the same opportunity and the same concession. I appeal to the Minister to consider that aspect of the matter very closely. Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Kerry are the chief breeding grounds of the mass of our cattle. They are the areas in which the Minister should strike first and ensure, in connection with the young cattle, that the cows of the future will be the heifers which are now passing the T.B. test.

Mr. Hilliard

The Animal Diseases (Bovine Tuberculosis) Bill, 1957, is one of the most welcome pieces of legislation to come before this House in many years. It is welcomed by all sections of the community and by all political Parties. It is a Bill which is there, not of our own volition. It is forced upon us by the decision of the British Government and the British people to eradicate bovine tuberculosis from amongst cattle in their own country. Therefore, it devolved on us to see that the eradication of bovine tuberculosis was undertaken. The eradication scheme has been in operation now for a number of years, but this is the first piece of legislation under which the job is being put on a different basis and under which it is hoped, within a reasonable time, to secure an all free certificate for the whole country.

From the figures supplied in the memorandum circulated in connection with this Bill, and from those given by the previous Minister in reply to parliamentary question and otherwise, it is clear that the incidence of bovine tuberculosis does not stand at a very high figure. People do not seem to realise that though prevalence of the disease in our young stock is at such a low level, a larger percentage of our older stock suffer from it later in life. That is a fact that should be borne in mind when we deal with the figures we have before us.

I do not disagree with the Department's decision to make the counties in the West of Ireland and in the northwestern part of the State the areas in which it is proposed to carry out an intensive anti-tuberculosis campaign under this Bill. You must take into consideration that our store cattle are mainly drawn from the West of Ireland, from Counties Mayo, Galway, Leitrim, Roscommon, and from Cavan and Monaghan. It is most important that our store cattle in our main exporting areas should be certified as free from tuberculosis.

I understand it is generally agreed that the pasteurisation of milk in the creamery areas will reduce considerably the incidence of tuberculosis among the cattle fed on this milk—that it will reduce the incidence of the disease among our young cattle, particularly in Limerick, Cork and Tipperary. I feel the Department is working along the right lines in that. I feel also that if we are in a position to get the country fully certified as free from tuberculosis within a specified number of years—within the period that Britain aims to have her country wholly certified—I think we will have done a good day's work. In cases where we will still have cattle that may not pass the test, we can deal with them in the dead meat market in Britain.

This Bill provides the mechanics under which the eradication scheme will be carried out. It does nothing more than that, and unless the campaign is pursued with vigour, intelligence and determination, it will not be as successful as we hope. I believe the present Minister, as was the previous Minister, is deeply concerned with the matter. It is a question that concerns everybody in the country. We are depending upon the British market to take the majority of our surplus cattle. Being in that position, it is incumbent upon us to see that we maintain our place by providing for that market animals of quality, animals certified as completely free from tuberculosis.

Our aim is to maintain in this country disease-free herds of cattle. I shall not here go into question relating to the housing and the other care of our stock. Those are separate problems and I am quite satisfied the Minister for Agriculture will keep them in mind and that he will, in time, provide a fund to take care of them. I feel sure this is a measure that will be welcomed by the cattle trade associations and the farmers' associations. I feel equally sure that our work in this field will be completed in a shorter space of time than we can visualise at the moment.

On the question of compensation, there is a clause in the Bill providing for the payment of the market value for all animals taken from farmers and destroyed by the Department. Deputy Moher was criticised for, it was alleged, stating that the country could not afford to pay compensation. I think what Deputy Moher had in mind was consequential compensation. I recently came across a case where a farmer's herd was destroyed because of Johne's disease. That man was paid compensation under the Order, but his consequential loss was so great that it almost put him out of business. The same would apply to farmers in the dairy business who, having spent years building up herds, find that those herds do not pass the tuberculosis test and that they must be destroyed. Such farmers will be paid simply the market value of the animals destroyed. They will get nothing for consequential loss.

I believe that at the moment the country could not afford to go into this very large question of consequential losses. I believe the best it is possible to do in that respect is being provided in this Bill. I wish the Minister well in this work. I hope he will get the full co-operation of all the people in the State. He will need all possible co-operation to have this work expeditously and efficiently carried out.

Mr. Manley

The reason there has not been more enthusiasm about this tuberculosis eradication scheme for cattle is that the people were frightened off by the magnitude of the problem—the problem it posed for the ordinary farmer as to how he would get rid of his reactors and how he would get replacements. Farmers generally looked at this problem in a material and financial way. We all admit the urgency of the problem because we all realise that the cattle trade is the rock upon which our economy is founded. It is really the basic plank of all our economy, and in the worst days of our history, in the penal times, our cattle trade was the one thing through which our people were able to survive.

I have learned more about this scheme, sitting here since 10.30 this morning, than I ever knew about it before. I believe there was a great deal of misunderstanding in the country as to the effects of this scheme. I heard a farmer say that even in the areas where they had succeeded in wiping out the disease, they had now refused to follow up the campaign. That propaganda is going on. I do not know who is disseminating it, but it is damaging to the whole progress of this scheme and the opportunities which it affords. That will have to be counteracted by educating our farmers to the urgency of such a scheme. This Bill brings home that urgency and I would suggest to the Minister that in the co-operative creamery areas, we should have a series of lectures by the Department's veterinary officers on the urgency and need of the scheme and asking for co-operation.

Deputy Moher mentioned a matter of which I have been thinking in recent months, the pasteurisation of skim milk in the creameries. I believe Deputy Dillon was perfectly right when he suggested to the Minister that by a certain date in the near future, all skim milk returned from the creamery should be pasteurised. If we are to be consistent and logical in our approach to this problem, we have to do that. Between the time the calf is dropped until it is fed with skim milk, that is the vital time. Will the farmers segregate their calves and reserve the milk from the non-reactor cows for these calves? We know well that on the farm it is a great rush for the farmer's son or the farmer's employee to take his place at the creamery. He does not think of feeding those calves with the right milk. I do not think it would be very costly to have a small percentage of new milk pasteurised at the creamery and taken back by the farmer to feed to those young calves. The calves would then have new milk for the first few weeks and pasteurised skim milk after that. That would represent a real start in the non-intensified areas.

There is something in the point made by Deputy Moher and Deputy Hughes as to why the scheme was not begun in the South where we have a high density of cattle population. It is extraordinary that the movement of cattle has been from the South to the Midlands and the West over the years. That movement cannot be arrested. It will go on and it is rather contradictory for us, with that movement going on, to have this intensified scheme carried out in the West. There must have been some reason for it which the Minister, or perhaps the ex-Minister, could explain.

The success of the eradication scheme will, in the last analysis, depend on the co-operation of the farmers and those who are owners of dairy herds. I believe that once the farmers realise it is in their own interest, that co-operation will be forthcoming. It is gratifying to see that the ex-Minister and the present Minister are of the one mind and that we have a continuity of purpose and of planning in this scheme. There is no question of one finding fault with the other for not doing the right thing. It is also gratifying to see that all Parties in the House have the one objective, to give the scheme every encouragement and to see that it is expedited.

Mr. Donegan

It was very heartening to hear the ex-Minister last night offering the fullest co-operation to the present Minister in this problem. It goes without saying that the co-operation of all sides of the House in the eradication of bovine tuberculosis is the first essential. That the problem is a complex one, in every sense of the word, also goes without saying. We can take it that the headline has been set for the achievement of the eradication of this disease. Three years has been mentioned and I think Deputy Lynch mentioned a maximum of five years as the deadline.

That gives us very little time to deal with a problem of this magnitude in all its aspects and the various difficulties that will crop up. Therefore, it is imperative that, as in the case of any serious complaint, we should strike at the root of it. I suggest that the root of this problem is in the dairying districts of the South where about 80 per cent. of our stock come from.

I know many arguments will be advanced in regard to the store cattle being exported, but what is the use of trying to clear certain areas if the stock in those areas is being replaced by calves from infected areas and from infected herds? Surely it is an utter impossibility to keep those areas clear, if the replacements are, in the main, coming from infected areas where calves are going in that are already infected.

I am, therefore, in support of the idea that this problem should be tackled in the intensive dairying areas. There is, I suppose, another objection to it from the financial point of view, and perhaps that would be the overriding one, but I suggest that there is no alternative in the time available to us to solve this problem. I realise that it is a big problem for any dairy farmer to replace his reactor cows, especially if the percentage is high. The problem requires drastic measures, but not as drastic as some people imagine. I again agree with Deputy Lynch that the majority of cows that react are the high-yielding cows. The replacement of those cows will represent to the farmer concerned a reduction in his output of milk, involving a large consequential loss, even though he gets the full market value of a reactor.

It is a very good thing to get the co-operation both of this House and of the farming organisations. However, it is no use speaking vaguely about the responsibility of farmers in regard to the national interest. A farmer may be an idealist in some ways, but, in the last analysis, he is and must be a realist. I believe the proper way to get the co-operation of the farmers who may have to carry out this drastic action is to offer them an inducement in price, to offer to dairy farmers who have T.B.-free herds a bonus or an extra price per gallon for the milk they send to the creameries.

I know it involves a pretty considerable financial outlay, but the results achieved would be well worth it. The farmers, as I have already said, will be involved in heavy consequential losses, if they have to get out of high-yielding cows. Nobody believes, not even the urban dweller, that you can walk out with the price of a cow, if you have had to get rid of a good yielding cow, and replace her with a cow that is as good. That cannot be done. It takes years to build up a herd of 600 or 700-gallon cows and it costs a fairly considerable amount of money If we want to tackle the matter seriously, the farmers will have high consequential losses and I suggest seriously that a bonus in price should be offered to the farmer who has an attested herd. We will then be able to get somewhere near closing the gap.

I think it has been generally accepted that a lot of cows that are reactors produce milk that is tuberculosis free. I suggest this as falling into line with Deputy Moher's suggestion that there should be segregation in the herds. If a dairy farmer is not prepared to go the whole way, provided it can be proved to the satisfaction of the departmental inspectors or the veterinary surgeons that the cows are not producing T.B. infected milk, they could be kept on, segregated from the rest of the herd.

Deputy Wycherley suggested it would be a wise thing to deal with maiden heifers up to two years and I agree with that, but it would not be enough, because if only 7 per cent. of the young cattle are affected, how is it that such a high percentage of the older cattle are affected? That immediately suggests that they pick it up through coming into contact with tuberculosis during their lives. That can be due to bad housing, overcrowding, and poor ventilation, and a lot could be said in that connection for a complete review of the farm building scheme.

The problem will also remain of course, even though you have pasteurisation plants in the creameries. Here, I would like to pay a tribute to the previous Minister. As a member of a creamery committee, I can say that he gave encouragement to the creameries to put in pasteurisation plants, but I would suggest that strict supervision be maintained on these plants as some of them have given quite an amount of trouble and caused much expense for the creameries that installed them. The Department should try to ensure that when people sell plants of that nature, they will be in a position to service them without delay.

Pasteurisation of skim milk would, of course, solve the problem for the greater part of the stock on the farm, but not the problem of the young calf which, despite anything that can be said, will be fed its mother's milk for the first fortnight of its life. The difficulty here is that the mother may be a reactor. How is the Department or anybody else to prevent what has been the practice on the farm over the years of feeding the mother's milk to calves and thereby infecting them? The logical thing is to have the reactors removed.

Coming back to the note on which I opened, I think that is the proper approach to the matter. By beginning at the root of the evil, you will be taking the short cut, even though it is the more expensive way. I suggest, since the problem is so urgent and pressing, expense must be a secondary consideration for this House.

Captain Giles

As this Bill concerns my county very much, I rise to give it my blessing. It is a grand thing to find that we have a united Parliament in connection with this measure.

I believe, however, this will be a costly business for the farmer, but whether we like it or not, we must face up to it. There is no need for panic. The farmers have always risen to the occasion in the past and they will do so now. The key to the success of the scheme is in the compensation. If there is generous compensation—and I think the Government has gone a fair distance in paying the market value— it should succeed. At the same time, the replacement of reactors by a better type of cattle is very costly and the farmers will suffer, no matter what compensation they get for reactors.

The cattle trade, of course, is the lifeline of the country and if it fails, all fails. In my county, we have a large export of store cattle. The same applies to the Midlands. It is therefore up to every farmer to do his job and I believe they will do it. The Department is doing its best. So is the present Minister, and the previous Minister did his best. I agree that many things can be done by the farmers themselves, but the first thing they should do is to get organised for the proper working of the scheme. The Department can only set a headline.

This is a non-controversial Bill and it should be received in the same spirit by the country, but a good many farmers are slow to act and a lead must be given. The advisory officers of the Department must get out day and night and arouse people to a realisation of the position. If the lead is properly given, the farmers will follow and in this case I think the lead is being fairly well given from the top.

Like Deputy Hughes and Deputy Moher, I think the creamery areas are the key to this problem. A large number of cattle come from the South and from the West into my own county in the fall of the year. They come up from Waterford, Tipperary and the Midland areas and I would like to see the scheme in operation in those areas as soon as possible. I agree with what the Government has done up to the present. They came to the areas not so badly affected and they are getting those areas cleared up as soon as possible, but I believe the creamery areas in the South will have to be tackled as soon as possible.

I belive there is a large amount of tuberculosis in the herds down in the South and a lot of it is the fault of the farmers. During the summer season, they get all the milk they can and all the money they can out of it, and during the winter months, from what I am told, the herds are nearly starving. You can go along on a winter day when there is snow and mud and sleet and see herds of cows standing at the farmyard gates bawling like the devil.

I believe proper feeding is the key to healthy cattle just as in the case of people themselves. I believe the cattle of the South of Ireland are half-starved and we are getting the outfall from those herds of half-starved cows up in the Midlands. I would prefer to see a healthier type of animal coming up from the South and farmers in the South will have to be made realise the importance of good feeding. If the cattle are well fed, there is not half the incidence of tuberculosis. Housing is another point. I agree with Deputy Moher that the closed shed is not the ideal thing. The important essentials are the open yard, the shelter belt and good food. If these are insisted upon, we shall get rid of tuberculosis without any very heavy expenditure at all. We cannot afford to lose the British market. We have nothing else.

A good deal of progress has been made in my own county but an odd situation has developed. Very often, when a test is made, it is the best cows who go down under the test. The remainder get a clean bill of health. When, however, the test is repeated at the end of the year, three or four of the cows unaffected earlier will go down under the new test. That presents a very big problem.

Pasteurisation of milk is essential and it should be compulsory everywhere. Feeding bad milk to calves is bound to spread infection. I would appeal to the Department to start a course of lectures and general education for our farmers. The majority of our farmers are small farmers. They need a lead and that lead must come from the top. The majority of our farmers are not well educated. They will suffer heavily under this scheme because most of them have only one or two cows, and, if they go down under test, the position for their owners will be very serious. It is essential that there should be some educational scheme for these people.

Farmers' organisations should be availed of for lectures and study courses. It is difficult to get a united front and a united front is absolutely necessary if the job is to be done. Unfortunately, in some of these organisations, there is controversy and bickering. It is for that reason I say that the lead must come from the top. The big farmer will always turn up to a meeting. The small farmers, the 90 per cent. of our farmers, will stay at home. Though they may be small they are not insignificant. It is they who have built up this nation in the past and it is they who make the foundation of the nation at present. It is they who are always ready to rise to an emergency. They must have proper leadership. It is no use having a colonel, a major, or Sir Somebody Something in control of farmers' organisations. The moment they come in, the small man fades out, and damn right he is.

We have an opportunity now of bringing our people together. We have a united Parliament, a united Department and we should be able to weld our farmers together. If every man is made alive to the gravity of the situation, we shall have a clean bill of health in a very short time; but everything will depend on who is at the top and I want the Department to ensure that the right people are at the top. The Minister is a realist. I have always had confidence in him. He is a man of the people. He will do his job and the people will follow him as they followed his predecessor in office. We have two good men—one in office and one in opposition—and if they work hand-in-hand, much good will ensue.

Mr. Allen

It is a matter for congratulation that this Bill has got such a good House. Everyone seems to be in favour of it. But that is not enough. We shall have to put it across to the country as well. We shall have to have the co-operation of stock owners and herders. Over and above the areas scheduled for intensive effort, much voluntary work might be done in other areas. I have often wondered whether or not it was wise for the former Minister to change the original scheme. I think he would have got better results by continuing the scheme as it was and that is the opinion of a great number of herd owners. Is it a fact that reactors bear the same mark when they are tested as does the animal which has passed the test?

Mr. Dillon

No. The reactor is not marked.

Mr. Allen

There is a difficulty because people come along and sell cows and say they were tubercular-tested. But they do not say that they were passed. More publicity should be given to that. The public are not aware of the distinctive mark where the animal has passed the test and reactors are being sold as if they had passed the test satisfactorily. Such sales should be made illegal under this Bill.

With regard to the licensing of bulls, bulls are licensed twice a year. The Minister should ensure that no bull will receive a licence, unless it has passed the test. That is all important. We have thousands of bulls. We know that the bulls which are shown in Ballsbridge, Cork, Waterford and elsewhere must pass the test, as otherwise they will not get premiums. The reactors afterwards find their way into herds and are kept by farmers throughout the country. One of the first things that the Minister should do is to make a rule that no licence will be issued in respect of any bull unless he has passed the tuberculin test. That would be a simple matter. No bull can be shown in Ballsbridge or other centres unless he has passed the tuberculin test. A third of the bulls go down on the initial test and are kept in herds all over the country. We may be spending a lot of money doing good in one area and at the same time we may be doing serious injury in another district.

Is there any information available to farmers on the question of poultry as a cause of tuberculosis in herds? I heard a veterinary surgeon say that a type of tuberculosis can be caused by poultry going through herds, being in the cow byres and so on. The Minister should have some leaflets published or some statement made on that subject in order to clarify the position. If the incidence of tuberculosis is increased by poultry mixing with herds, in the cowbyres and everywhere else, farmers should be advised to that effect.

I disagree entirely with my colleague from North Cork who suggested that a farmer should be specially compensated, paid more for milk, for doing what he should do in the interest of public health and in his own interest.

Mr. Dillon

They did that in England.

Mr. Allen

I know but they are subsidising milk very heavily in England. If we have to subsidise milk more heavily than we do at the moment, I do not know where we will be.

Mr. Hughes

The farmers are expecting it.

Mr. Allen

The line should be that we should do something to help ourselves. If the full value of the animal removed from the herd is paid, that should be sufficient compensation. Farmers can help themselves very considerably by ensuring that young cattle going into the herds are tuberculosis free. If the matter is left to the national purse in every respect and if no one except the Government or the Department of Agriculture accepts responsibility, bovine tuberculosis will never be eradicated. Farmers must help themselves. A great deal can be done in the areas outside the intensive areas by farmers ensuring that the bulls they keep are free from tuberculosis. I should like to ask if the bulls in the insemination stations are tuberculin tested?

Mr. Dillon

They are.

Mr. Allen

And are they all tuberculin free?

Mr. Dillon

They are.

Mr. Allen

Are they maintained free?

Mr. Dillon

They are.

Mr. Allen

That is good. This Bill will receive the full co-operation of everyone in the House but it will be the responsibility of the Minister to get the co-operation of the herd owners and their help in bringing all the cattle up to the desired standard.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Moylan)

If it is accepted that the reply to a debate on a Bill should be a defence of its principles or an assessment of the criticism levelled at them, then it does not seem to me that I have any need to reply. The tone of the debate was such that there is general acceptance of the Bill and the criticism might be described rather as a body of information placed at the disposal of the Department for the betterment of the methods that they have been inclined to use.

I take the view with regard to certain criticism that the first business is to get the authority from the Dáil to operate and then to use that authority intelligently and with a willingness to take and impose certain losses initially so that we might make profits at a later date and ensure the safety of our Irish economy. If we could use the phrase "reasonable ruthlessness" to describe our action I would agree with Deputy Dillon that we must make very definite attempts to remove the reactor. I am not disagreeing with his views except that I think the results of depending on the West to supply heifer replacements to the dairying area would be inadequate. We should encourage the breeding of replacements in the dairying area as much as possible.

I am glad Deputy Dillon has cordial relations with the veterinary profession. I do not find it easy always to have cordial relations with anybody but there is a different position nowadays with regard to veterinary surgeons from that which existed in my youth. When I was a boy, the veterinary surgeon was probably called in only in the case of bloodstock or very valuable horses. Nowadays the high value of cows has made a definite change and there is a very valuable livelihood to be made by veterinarians. I might say that departmental regulations have not adversely affected the good living of the veterinarians. But professional bodies are very sensitive and they are apt to take alarm even when there is no need to take alarm.

If difficulties exist, as I believe they do, I hope to bring some reassurance to the veterinarians that their position will be safeguarded but even if certain functions, limited and defined, in regard to this matter, may be delegated under veterinary supervision to men without professional veterinary qualifications, I do not see that there is any great need for alarm on the part of the veterinary profession.

I was tempted very much to pursue Deputy Moher on his dissertation in regard to farm architecture, but I shall not do so except to say that I am at one with him in believing that the open shed is a far better proposition than the houses I know all over the South. I do not know if we could do without byres. Possibly cows might be let loose in an open shed if they were de-horned. But if we are to have clean milk I do not think we can allow cows loose in any shed. That does not detract from the architectural idea of an open shed.

I wonder if we are painting the picture in too sombre shades? Deputy Dillon may not remember personally but he will have knowledge of the fact that a very distinguished lady undertook to cleanse Ireland of tuberculosis many years ago, and instead of succeeding in her objective she became rather a subject of suspicion and even derision. I think the Irish Party even had a hand in it. I do not think we should paint the situation as black as it has been painted. I doubt propaganda. Very often other nations make claims which may not be wholly justified. The idea of clearing tuberculosis in any country is not a question merely of clearing it and being finished with it. There can be recurrences. I wonder, even with the rather dark picture we have painted for ourselves, if we are much worse in relation to other countries which make great claims in regard to clearing tuberculosis?

I agree with Deputy Dillon about the necessity for the removal of reactors. But my fear of tuberculosis is not as great as, say, Deputy Moher, who envisaged the possible abolition of fairs and of contacts. After all, the tuberculosis virus is not as active as a cinema flea moving like a hurdler jumping from cow to cow.

Mr. Dillon

Well, now, it is very nimble.

Mr. Moylan

It may be. Nevertheless, I assume, like human beings, bovine animals build up their own defences against its attack——

Mr. Dillon

By becoming reactors.

Mr. Moylan

Quite so. I think we must remove at once what Deputy Moher called the pulmonary ones. We should not be afraid to spend money in going further than that, if we decide it is essential. But Deputies must not expect us to put all the suggestions, no matter how valuable they are, into operation at once. We must learn as we go.

I think that the feeding of animals has a very definite effect on the spreading of tuberculosis. I was in one of the dairying counties—not my own—where the land is as good as any place in the world. I saw in the local creamery that the returns from the cows were 320 gallons per cow. I saw the cows in June. They had not recovered from the winter, and I know undoubtedly that animals in the weak condition they were in must be susceptible to disease. Food is all-important. Last week-end I was out in the country in County Dublin. I saw the most beautifully made hay I ever saw in one farm and I saw in the next farm hay that reminded me of that I saw in Limerick —hay cut in August and left to dry to a perfect whiteness. Feeding cattle with fibrous stuff of that nature, which has no longer any nutrition in it, is definitely bound to have some effect on their disease resistance.

We must insist on pasteurisation. If we do not have milk pasteurised from the creamery, we will continue indefinitely to spread the disease. Even though there may be complaints of cost, we will be generous, and if there is a necessity for it we may have to meet special conditions with special concessions. I do not think that the creameries are so insolvent that they could not meet the problem of pasteurisation with the opportunities we give them to meet it.

Again, somebody spoke of the feeding of calves. I think there are in most farms reasonable opportunities of segregating young calves from dairy cows. The first few weeks in a calf's life are vital. If the calf suckles a tubercular cow, then your pasteurisation is of little use. We will have to spread the light of education throughout the country in regard to this matter. I think our farmers will be receptive of the knowledge which can be given to them. The fact that all Parties here have been so receptive of the Bill is a good augury for its acceptance throughout the country.

Somebody mentioned the British scheme. Criticism levelled at the scheme here, as it has been operated, might be justified if it contented itself with saying that mistakes had been made. They are bound to be made. When you start any programme of that nature you cannot be all perfect and all knowing. I assume that many lessons have been learned from what has been done already. Even lessons learned from mistakes may prove to be more valuable than the successes. I am sure the Department has studied what has been done in Britain. Certainly, we shall study it in the future for anything we may learn from it.

Deputy Moher said that 9 per cent. of the 14-day test stores going to Britain are found to react again. That is not correct. The figure is substantially lower. Deputy Moher and other Deputies also spoke about the necessity for co-operation by rural organisations.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered: That the sitting be suspended until 3 p.m.