Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 6 Oct 1998

Vol. 494 No. 4

Written Answers. - Animal Health Problems.

Trevor Sargent

Question:

91 Mr. Sargent asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if his attention has been drawn to a report (details supplied) which confirms that animal deaths in the Askeaton area of County Limerick over recent years were caused by aluminium poisoning and not by bad husbandry as some official sources had suggested; the plans, if any, he has to reopen the inquiries which his Department made into the issue in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18436/98]

Trevor Sargent

Question:

101 Mr. Sargent asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he will review the scientific report confirming aluminium poisoning as the cause of the deaths of horses on a farm in Askeaton, County Limerick, in view of the fact the report confirmed that the bones of animals from another farm in the area contained up to 20 times the accepted safe levels of aluminium and milk from a local dairy farm contained approximately six times the normal level of aluminium; whether he will facilitate the establishment of an independent inquiry into the contribution that pollution from heavy industry on the Shannon estuary makes to animal deaths in the Askeaton area in view of the grave public concern; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18435/98]

Minister for Agriculture and Food (Mr. Walsh)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 91 and 101 together.

I am aware of the scientific report referred to. Animal health problems in the Askeaton area of County Limerick have been the subject of an ongoing major multidisciplinary scientific investigation, co-ordinated by the Environmental Protection Agency. To date, three interim and seven progress reports, detailing the progress of the investigation, have been published by the EPA.

My Department is part of this investigation and has been monitoring animal health, mainly on cattle, on six farms in the Askeaton area since 1995. One of these farms, which has been managed by my Department since 1995, adjoins the farm on which the horses referred to in the recent report were kept. Throughout this period no evidence was found of disease conditions which could be ascribed to aluminium toxicity, either through the parasite mechanism being put forward by the report or the more usual one of induced phosphorus deficiency. Investigations carried out on a further 21 farms in the area have not shown any evidence that aluminium toxicity was the cause of animal ill-health or disease.

My Department takes the view that the condition reported in horses on one particular farm and its suggested association with tissue aluminium is a significant finding which warrants further investigation, particularly since the aluminium content of soils in the Askeaton area was found during the EPA investigation to be within the normal range for agricultural soils elsewhere in Ireland. However, for the past two years my Department has been unsuccessful in repeated attempts to have the owner of the farm in question co-operate with the multidisciplinary investigation and has been denied access to the farm and the animals on it. In 1995, veterinary staff of my Department did visit the farm in question and, as a result of its investigations, a number of disease conditions were diagnosed and recommendations were made in relation to parasite control.

Repeated offers by my Department in 1996 and 1997 to further investigate animal health problems on the farm were rejected, as was an offer to include the farm in a two year study of animal health commencing in 1996. Further, at a meeting with my officials in May 1997, the horse owner and his veterinary adviser, the principal author of the report, refused a request from my Department for any information in their possession on animal health problems on the farm for inclusion in a general investigation. There has been a consistent desire on the part of both the EPA, as co-ordinators of the multidisciplinary study, and my Department, as the agency dealing with veterinary aspects thereof, to include this farm in the investigation.

I refer the Deputy to the statement issued on 2 October 1998 by the EPA, as co-ordinators of the multdisciplinary investigation. I draw particular attention to the following passage contained therein; "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today emphasised that a reported connection between disease and deaths of horses on a farm at Askeaton and acid pollution is not substantiated by the published results of the animal health investigations being conducted in the area since 1995. They reject the inferences and speculative comments in relation to a recent study on this problem as published by a Sunday paper last week, on the basis that there was no evidence to support these theories".

I am still anxious to mount a full scale investigation into the factors on the farm in question which may have contributed to the high level of horse mortality. While such mortality is being attributed to aluminium poisoning, the fact remains that I can form no reliable assessment of the causal factors without access to the horse farm in question, its animals and its records.

The Mid-Western Health Board, one of the agencies involved in the multidisciplinary investigation, has found no evidence to date of excess human disease in the area which could be linked to aluminium.