Vol. 510 No. 4
120 Mr. Coveney asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development if he will recognise the draimeann breed of cattle, indigenous to the south Kerry and west Cork regions; and if his attention has been drawn to the fact that, unless AI stations accept semen from these cattle, this rare breed may soon be extinct. [22951/99]
I am fully supportive of the efforts being made by the draimeann and Endangered Cattle Society to re-establish the draimeann breed of cattle in the south-west of Ireland. In 1998 a cattle breeding expert from my Department visited members of the society to assess the draimeann cattle and to offer advice on possible strategies which they might pursue to achieve their objective of re-establishing these cattle as a breed. However, draimeann cattle are now genetically very heterogeneous in the sense that crossbreeds of many breeds have been introduced and it would take considerable time and effort before the population could become recognised as a breed.
On the question of collecting semen from bulls of draimeann type, this would not be advisable from an animal breeding perspective until it was established that such bulls would breed true to the type defined as draimeann. This could only be established by repeatedly selecting animals of the desired phenotype over a number of generations of breeding.
