asked the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries if there is any way to prevent people from selling seed potatoes known to be inflected with eel worm.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Sale of Infected Seed Potatoes.
19.
Sale for seed purposes of potatoes on which potato root eelworm exists is contrary to the provisions of the Potato Root Eelworm Order, 1951. My Department is prepared to examine, sample and test consignments of uncertified potatoes sold for seed purposes provided the purchaser so requests and gives necessary particulars of the consignment. I do not, however, recommend that farmers should purchase uncertified potatoes for seed. In fact, my Department has repeatedly warned farmers of the risks which such a practice involves.
Where the Department refuse to certify seed because of the presence of eelworm, are there any steps taken, where they try to pass the seed through, to ensure that those potatoes are not brought up to Dublin and sold as seed without a certificate?
If there is no certified reason whatever—there are many other reasons in addition to the root eelworm—the Department would find it impossible to find where that consignment may have come from or may go. This would be impossible.
It is a very serious thing to have happen. If, for instance, we have wheat which is certified as unmillable, it is coloured and cannot be sold. Is there any way we can do something like this in regard to potatoes so that they will not affect a whole area?
On the one hand, wheat is all purchased, whether millable or otherwise.
I am asking if it is possible to do the same thing in regard to seed potatoes.
A farmer who has potatoes left on his hands which he has failed to get certified could scarcely be expected to conform with some departmental regulations with regard to these potatoes.
Could the Department not do as they do with wheat, buy all the potatoes and then dispose of them?
That would be impossible.
It would not.
The last short advice again is to buy certified seed only and you will not have any problem.
The people do not realise that and they are suffering.