asked the Minister for Agriculture the cost up to the present of the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme in (a) County Cork, (b) Munster and (c) the country as a whole; and if he will outline the present state of progress of the Scheme in (a), (b) and (c).
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Scheme.
31.
With regard to the first part of the Question the particulars requested at (a) and (b) cannot be calculated with accuracy, mainly because of the difficulty of apportioning the total expenditure on export guarantee payments between individual areas. It is estimated however that the total net cost of the Scheme to date has exceeded £1,600,000 in the case of (a) and £6,900,000 in the case of (b). The net cost in the case of (c) is £19,272,466.
With regard to the second part of the Question the position in County Cork is similar to that in the remainder of Munster, excluding County Clare which, of course, is attested. Under what is known as the Southern Dairying Area Scheme re-tests of some 50 per cent. of the herds in the Scheme indicate that in the re-tested herds the incidence of the disease in dry stock has been reduced to a low figure and that the incidence in cows has fallen appreciably. The progress made by herd-owners in the Southern Dairying Area has not yet been sufficiently rapid to enable clearance measures to be put into effective operation there. How soon such measures can be introduced will depend on farmers increasing their efforts to get rid of reactors and replacing them with tested animals.
In the country as a whole, the position is that ten counties, containing 1,700,000 cattle, are now attested, and nine counties which are at present at the clearance area stage are expected to be attested by the end of 1962. There are 1,100,000 cattle in these nine counties, so that by the end of 1962 we expect that there will be close on 3,000,000 attested cattle in the country, or over 60 per cent. of the total number of cattle.