Vol. 183 No. 4
I move:
That for the purpose of any Act of the present session providing for the amendment of the Diseases of Animals Acts, 1894 to 1957, it is expedient to make provision for the payment into or disposal of for the benefit of the Exchequer of any balance standing to the credit of the General Cattle Diseases Fund on the 31st day of March, 1963, and any moneys which but for such Act would be payable into that Fund after that day.
I believe that the Minister has a general power to schedule animal diseases in respect of which compensation can be paid if it be in the public interest to do so, and from time to time the schedule is altered by Ministerial Order. I made a suggestion to the Minister on the Second Stage of this Bill that he might schedule equitably death from lightning, and his only reply to that was that this had never been suggested to him by anyone outside the Department or Dáil Éireann and he did not see why he should take the initiative without a suggestion coming to him from some body representative of agricultural interests outside the House or his Department. I want to demur to that general proposition. I think it is a very good thing that the agricultural community should be organised to protect their own interests but, in the last analysis, Dáil Éireann is representative of the whole country and there does not seem to be any very valid reason why a case on behalf of any section of the community should not be made here and considered on its merits.
Of its nature the number of persons who could be affected by the catastrophe of losing their cattle through lightning must be very small, and furthermore there is no means of predicting, as there is in connection with an epidemic or pandemic what category of persons are likely to be affected. It is at once apparent to any organisation that if an infectious disease manifests itself in a particular area the slaughter procedure designed to prevent the spread of the disease is of widespread interest. There is a common saying that lightning never strikes twice in the same place and, far from apprehending that there should be any extension of the loss in the immediate area, the general impression is —and long experience confirms it— that, if one's neighbour meets with a catastrophe of that nature, it is extremely rare for any adjoining holding to suffer a similar disaster. Yet it is also common knowledge to all of us that where this disaster does supervene, on a small holding particularly, it often results in a far greater catastrophe than the incidence of disease, and it also is a disaster of a character which is quite unlikely to evoke representations from organised farmers who do not see a widespread risk in the event.
I want to make the point to the Minister that it is a good thing to spread a risk of this kind as widely as possible. The total losses from this cause in any given year, looked at nationally, are microscopic but the loss that falls upon an individual farmer who may lose three or four cattle as a result of lightning can be utterly crippling. To avail of this Bill to cover that risk should involve virtually no cost at all.
I do not like to interrupt the Deputy but this is purely a Diseases of Animals Bill.
If I were Minister for Agriculture, I think I could schedule the deaths of cattle from lightning bolts.
I do not know what the Deputy could do but I have allowed him to go as far as he probably wanted on this matter. To say that death from lightning is a disease could strain the Financial Resolution very considerably.
The main purpose of the Bill is to compensate a farmer for——
Diseases of animals.
It is not really diseases of animals. It is for the right of the Minister to slaughter cattle on a holding in order to prevent the spread of disease in the vicinity. If you have one beast with foot and mouth disease, the Minister, under his general powers, can enter on your holding and slaughter all your cattle.
I think the Deputy has made the case. As far as I can gather, the matter is clearly outside the scope of the diseases of animals.
I do not follow. This is not compensating a farmer for losing his beasts through disease. This is to compensate a farmer for losing beasts that are slaughtered——
Provided they come under the Diseases of Animals Act.
The Diseases of Animals Act has nothing to do with the disease per se. It is to compensate for the slaughter of healthy animals in order to prevent the spread of disease. I think there is a close analogy in saying that if foot and mouth disease happens to strike a farm whereby a number of cattle——
Foot and mouth disease is obviously a disease.
We are not talking about the diseased cattle, but the healthy cattle when the disease happens to have struck the farm. I have no doubt that the Minister has the power to do it, and I think he ought to do it. It would be very valuable; it would cost virtually nothing but would save quite a considerable number of people from such crippling losses as to render them almost unviable unless there is some fund to which they can turn for compensation.
Apart altogether from the question you have raised. Sir, as to whether this is an appropriate occasion on which to discuss this point, I want to say that I have a good deal of sympathy with those whose animals are killed by lightning but I do not think it would be advisable to deal particularly with the question of losses from lightning as distinct from the many other losses incurred by farmers. I admit that the suddenness of loss from lightning can be more terrifying and more depressing, perhaps, than the loss from prolonged and tedious disease, but the financial loss is not any greater. I know that many farmers were bewildered by livestock losses this season. I know of some farmers who suffered very heavily. Some of them consulted a number of veterinary surgeons and even went to the trouble of coming to the State Laboratory to see if they could find out what was the cause of their losses.
When the Deputy raised the matter with me on the adjournment, I contended that no case had been made. I said that as far as I knew this matter had not been raised either inside or outside the House. However, I did not give that as my entire reason for taking the line I did. The number of animals lost as a result of lightning is very small compared with the losses from other causes. If a farmer loses ten or 15 animals over three or four months from disease which the veterinary surgeons cannot identify, I believe he is harder hit than the person suffering loss by lightning because he has the additional cost of treating the animals.
Lightning strikes more than livestock. It strikes human beings and it strikes homes, and unless prior precautions are taken against such a tragedy there will be losses in consequence. When I said I had not heard this complaint from any other source I did not mean to convey that if I had been pressed by a number of people to have regard to this. I probably would have done something about it. I concede that there is a hardship on a limited number of people when lightning strikes swiftly, but there are other hardships equally great and far more widespread and against which there is no insurance cover for those concerned. The point I made in the course of my reply to the Parliamentary Question was that if we were to attempt to do anything like that, we should have a comprehensive approach to cover all losses from disease and risks of all kinds. It would not be a practicable proposition to consider that matter on this Bill.
I think there is weight and reason behind that approach. It is all very well to talk about scheduled diseases of one kind or another, but it is the ratepayers who will have to meet all these charges. While the amount involved might be small, somebody else might come along with an equally urgent and deserving proposition and make the case that it would only mean a farthing or a halfpenny in the £. Most of us here have experience of local authorities and we know that once you give an opportunity to increase the rates it means another chance to increase the general burden. I believe that any such procedure should be resorted to only in very exceptional circumstances.
