Deputy Garland gave me notice of his intention to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of the gassing of badgers under the ERAD scheme. Deputy Garland has ten minutes to present his case and the Minister five minutes to reply.
Adjournment Debate. - Gassing of Badgers.
I thank you, Sir, for allowing me to speak on this subject tonight. With your permission I would like to give one minute to Deputy Shatter.
Certainly. Does the House so agree? Agreed.
This sad story begins, I think, in 1971 when a dead badger was found in the south-west of England and was discovered to have bovine TB. This began a long, sorry saga in which the badger, once regarded as a friend of the farmer, was accused, exonerated and accused again of spreading TB among cattle. In 1975 badger setts in England were systematically gassed in order to destroy the badgers living inside them. Responding to public concern over this method of killing badgers, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr. Peter Walker, asked the Minister of Defence to test the efficiency of this method. Their results were disturbing. Many badgers took 25 to 30 minutes to die from the effects of the cyanide gas. They were shown to wander disoriented from their setts, a fact that had been noticed during the seven year gassing programme. In addition, it was discovered that setts would frequently have to be gassed three or four times before the badger finally succumbed. In 1982 Peter Walker announced that the gassing of badgers would be banned and cage trapping would be the method to be used in future.
Here in Ireland we have all heard recent statements from the IFA president, Alan Gillis, and more recently from the director of ERAD, Liam Downey, proposing that the gassing of badgers in bovine TB hotspots around the country should be introduced by the Minister, Deputy O'Kennedy. This is a preposterous notion and one which the Green Party, Comhaontas Glas, are opposed to totally. Despite 19 years of research in Britain into the possibilities of badgers spreading TB to cattle, no scientific evidence has been produced to support this view.
In Northern Ireland, the Ministry of Agriculture have announced details of a ten year research study into badgers and their relationship with TB. The report has come out clearly in defence of the badger. They do not believe the badger plays a role in spreading TB.
It would indeed be foolish to suggest there is absolutely no possibility of badgers ever spreading TB to cattle. However, many senior researchers in England do not believe the badger can play more than a minute role in the spreading of TB and even this minute role is still only a possibility.
The badger is a protected species under the Wildlife Act, 1976 and under the Berne Convention, to which Ireland is a signatory. Are we going to allow wholesale eradication of the badger when there is no scientific basis to suggest it plays a role in the spread of TB? I hope not.
In Offaly an eradication programme is under way under which all badgers, affected or otherwise, are being systematically killed, principally by snaring and shooting. This research — for want of a better term — has no scientific basis, as it is well known that all other strict measures to control TB are being enforced. ERAD have already announced, since the badger eradication scheme, that the incidence of bovine TB has gone down by 13 per cent. Thus ERAD are deliberately filtering out information to the country's farmers that the badger is responsible for TB in their herds. We can only say this is disgraceful. Without comparative tests having taken place in another area of similar type with a similar incidence of TB infected cattle and with a relatively similar number of badgers, this Offaly survey is useless. Of course, TB has been reduced in Offaly but not, we believe, because of the eradication of the badger but because farmers are not moving their cattle from field to field as they do all over the country and are not swapping slurry machines. In short, they are controlling the disease through their good management.
The badger is a protected species which is under threat because of the scandalous mismanagement of a TB eradication scheme which has cost the country's taxpayers £1 billion in the past 30 years. Other countries have controlled TB by effective testing and improved animal husbandry. They have not had to resort to scapegoating any unfortunate wild animals. I call on the Minister to refrain from bowing to the appalling pressure he has been subjected to by the IFA and ERAD. If the Diseases of Animals Act, 1966, is invoked and the badger is gassed we will strongly consider taking the matter up in the European courts.
I thank Deputy Garland for allowing me a small portion of his time. I wish to express support for the views he expressed. The badger is a protected species in this country. In recent months, as we entered the so-called green Presidency, we have witnessed this Government licensing the shooting of white fronted geese, the scandal of this Government continuing to issue licences for otter hunting and now we have had, apparently by way of Government policy emanating from the Department of Agriculture and Food, support for the wholesale gassing of badgers throughout the length and breadth of this country.
The badger is being used as a scapegoat for the failure of the TB eradication scheme. Government support for such a policy which runs directly contrary to the protection afforded to badgers under the Wildlife Act, 1976, makes a mockery of the so-called green Presidency and of our commitment to the wildlife of this country and undermines the credibility of the so-called environmental action plan the Government announced only a week or ten days ago. The first example of this environmental action plan is apparently a Government sponsored and supported slaughter of badgers. For this type of policy to be supported, or for the Government to give it sanction, is something this House is entitled to protest against. If the Government's intention is to renege on international conventions which seek to provide protection for the badger and to depart from the provisions contained in the Wildlife Act, they need to explain to this House why they intend to deal with matters in this way or allow Government-sponsored agencies to deal with matters in this way, when the suggestion that the badger is the cause of the major problem of bovine TB is so clearly refuted in the report published in Northern Ireland a short time before Christmas. It seems the research undertaken for that report is being ignored within the Department of Agriculture and Food, whatever about the Department of the Environment.
I hope the opportunity to raise this issue this evening on the Adjournment will afford both the Minister in the Department of Agriculture and Food and the Minister for the Environment an opportunity to explain the Government's view to this House and that the spectacle of thousands of badgers being slaughtered will not be one we will have to witness. I believe the general public would not support this and the majority of farmers would not support it. Good farming practices are going to contribute to a far greater extent to tackling the TB problem than the so-called slaughter of badgers throughout Ireland. As Deputy Garland has said, one of the first instances of a badger being proved scientifically to have TB derived from the badger having contact with cattle. Indeed there is a considerable dispute as to whether the cattle infect the badgers or the badgers infect the cattle.
I hope that the brief time we have had to raise this issue this evening will result in a different approach from that which it is feared will be taken by the Government, ERAD, the Department of Agriculture and Food and the Department of the Environment.
The bovine TB eradication scheme has been in operation in Ireland since 1954, but, regrettably, very little progress has been made in eradicating this disease since that time although there has been a considerable cost to the taxpayer. A number of reasons have been put forward and one focused on the badger as a possible source of infection. The farm organisations, in particular, have been pointing to the badger for some time but it is in the UK that the role of the badger has been most extensively researched. As far back as 1973 the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food considered that the badger was a reservoir of infection and that action was needed to gas badgers in areas where they were considered to be a source of infection. Lord Zucherman was commissioned in 1979 to review the problem and he concluded that badgers constituted a significant reservoir of TB and also that the high densities of both badgers and cattle in south-west England favoured the transmission of the disease within the badger population and also from badgers to cattle.
In addition, the Dunnet review which was commissioned by the British Government in 1984 again concluded that badgers can be infected by TB, that they are potential sources of infection in cattle and had to be taken into account when considering bovine TB. Dunnet questioned the cost-effectiveness of delineating badger social groups and the concept of establishing a "clean ring" around a farm. He concluded that the complete and permanent eradication of the disease in badgers and hence in cattle was not attainable by available methods, that is trapping. He recommended a more limited and confined strategy, that is, that badgers on the breakdown farm where the disease was being transmitted should be killed humanely but that the operation should not be extended beyond the breakdown farm. Last year the ESRI published a review entitled Badger and Bovine T.B. which states that in many parts of the country it may not be possible to control bovine TB without controlling the badger population.
The presence of tuberculosis in a badger in Ireland was first reported from Cork in 1975. Since then a large number of badgers killed in road accidents have been examined for TB and it has been found that over 10 per cent had lesions of the disease. In the light of this evidence the Wildlife Service agreed to allow the snaring of badgers in specific areas under licence "where all other potential causes have been eliminated". At present the Minister for Agriculture and Food is considering recommendations from ERAD regarding a policy to deal with badgers in the context of the bovine TB eradication programme. In making any decision he will be fully conscious of our obligations under the Council of Europe Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and National habitats and to the spirit of the Wildlife Act, 1976. He will also take into consideration the significant cost of the eradication programme to the taxpayer, which is in the order of £1 billion, the enormous importance of the cattle herd to the economy as well as to our beef and dairying industries and the need for ERAD to be in a position to deal with all factors relevant to the eradication of bovine TB.
In considering the relevance of the UK strategy in Ireland it should be noted that cost effectiveness was a prime issue in the Dunnet review. The maximum potential benefits from further reduction of the already relatively low incidence of bovine TB prevailing in Britain by badger removal could not be high. Furthermore, TB levels in badgers examined in Ireland seem to be appreciably higher than the county levels in the UK where the overall average is 3.9 per cent. The cost benefit of an effective method of removing infective badgers would be much greater in Ireland than has been reported from Britain.
At present the Minister is looking at ways in which the eradication policy can be made more effective. No decision has been taken to allow the gassing of badgers. No Government order has been made under the Disease of Animals Act, 1966, to gas badgers and the Wildlife Service have not issued licences for the gassing of badgers and do not intend to.