Clearly here the matter is relevant for debate, Sir. The old fund is being wound up and the new procedure is being adopted. First, I want to beg that we do not raise this matter into a grand question of principle on which the Minister and I are conjoined in irreconcilable differences. I take it that in fact the Minister and I both concede we have a problem here. The question is whether it can be equitably resolved without opening up vast potential additional issues which should be excogitated at much greater length before attempting a comprehensive insurance against death from disease in cattle.
Let us get our minds clear. This Bill has nothing to do with the death of livestock from disease. This Bill is solely concerned with the appropriate compensation for farmers whose cattle have to be destroyed in order to prevent the danger of the spread of disease. I want to suggest this analogy to the Minister, and I urge on him strenuously to look at it with an open mind. I think there is an analogy between a small farm being struck with the lightning of foot and mouth disease and being struck with the lightning of natural phenomena.
We are all agreed that in the case of the disaster of a small farm being struck by foot and mouth disease, it is a proper thing to slaughter all the cattle on the farm, but no one would argue that, even though that served the public interest, you should say to the farmer, after you buried all his stock: "You were just unlucky. The foot and mouth disease happened to strike your holding and all your stock had to be slaughtered. That is too bad. Lots of other people lost stock from fluke, stomach parasites or other causes and though their losses may have been extended over a protracted period, the end result is just as disastrous for them as it is for you." We are all agreed that, faced with the necessity of wiping out a man's livestock in the public interest, we ought to compensate him on a generous scale. That is the purpose of this Bill and the Acts that went before it under the general title of the Diseases of Animals Acts.
What I am suggesting is that, without going into the wider question of a general insurance scheme to cover all livestock against death by disease, which I agree with the Minister is an extremely complex and difficult problem, we can isolate one very strictly limited risk which besets all livestock. As the Minister says, looked at from the point of view of the whole country, the number of cases that occur are infinitesimal but each of them has this feature in it—that for the individual it is catastrophic.
Therefore, I argue that as each instance of this kind amounts to a catastrophe for the individual, because the total number of these incidents is microscopic and because the cause of death is readily identifiable by the circumstances in which it took place, this is a restricted situation with which it is very easy to deal without putting a burden of any substantial size on anybody but lifting if off the backs of a very few. That burden can be completely crippling. We could easily prescribe that deaths from lightning must be notified to the officers of the Department and the Garda Síochána within 12 hours. That would enable veterinary inspections to be made immediately and the popular report in the vicinity would confirm the recent occurrence of lightning so that it is relatively easy to exclude the possibility of fraud.
I am not suggesting that the Minister should take a decision here and now. He has power, I believe, by Order, if he wants to use his general powers. If he is determined to do it by Order, I would strongly urge upon him the desirability of bringing in whatever kind of amendment is requisite and make provision for death of livestock by lightning under this Bill.