I move:
That Dáil Éireann condemns the failure of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries to secure a settlement of the dispute which has brought the bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication schemes to a virtual standstill and calls for an immediate restoration of these vital services.
I move this motion because for the past 12 months or so the animal disease eradication programmes which have been running in this country —the bovine tuberculosis scheme for 21 years and the brucellosis scheme for about nine years—have come to a virtual standstill.
As far as I am aware, no worthwhile or real attempt has been made by the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries to secure a resumption of disease eradication. I do not know whether any trade dispute in the recent history of the country has been permitted to drag on for such an extraordinary length of time especially when one considers that there is no necessity whatever for a cessation of bovine tuberculosis testing. As far as I am aware, no dispute whatever exists between the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and the veterinary profession in regard to bovine TB testing, but since the 16th May last the Minister himself has caused the bovine TB eradication scheme to grind to a halt.
There have been a number of attempts on the part of the Minister and his colleagues in the Government to seek to ascribe the blame for the recent situation to areas other than where it rightly and properly belongs, that is to say, on the shoulders of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries himself. In considering these facts, the Minister must stand condemned in the eyes of everybody in the country, particularly in the eyes of the farming community whose livelihood is most immediately bound up with the future of the cattle herd in this country. As I say, no serious attempt has been make by the Minister to emerge from his entrenched position in this dispute and come to terms with the veterinary profession.
It would be an interesting exercise to attempt to come to a figure that would represent the loss in millions of pounds that has been caused by the intransigence and incompetence of the Minister. One must use these words when one is talking about a trade dispute that has been allowed to fester for 12 months. Surely during the passage of that time some solution, if it were earnestly sought, would have been found a long time ago. If one were to attempt to put a figure to the nearest £10 million on the losses that have been sustained by the reinfection of the cattle herd right throughout the length and breadth of the country, both with active tuberculosis and brucellosis, I am sure it would come to a sum that would appall the whole country. We recognise the appalling damage that has been done to the cattle herd generally by the present administration, apart from animal disease. We recognise that the value of the drop in the numbers of cattle in the last 12 months, valuing them consevatively indeed, is probably in the region of £10 million. The cattle herd is diminished by that amount in value and in numbers, although the price per head for cattle on the market at present is quite buoyant.
What I am endeavouring to point out is that the results that have been attained over 21 years of campaigning in bovine tuberculosis and in nine years of brucellosis testing has been put totally in jeopardy by the intransigence and incompetence of the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries and his colleagues in the Government with whom he shares responsibility.
At present throughout the country, if anybody takes the trouble to inquire, open cases of bovine tuberculosis, open active lesions, are being discovered in carcases in every meat factory. Throughout the length and breadth of the country, north and south, brucellosis is raging. As everybody knows, both these diseases have very, very serious implications for human health as well as for animal health. Their spread endangers the health of the population with the transmission in the case of brucellosis through milking and other ways causing chronic undulant fever, with infection of humans with tuberculosis as well.
It is an appalling state of affairs when farmer co-operatives in the north-western part of this country are issuing circulars to their shareholders warning them of the danger in purchasing calves from the south of Ireland because they are said to be so laden with brucellosis as to be a danger to the diminishing health levels of cattle in the northern part of the country. It is true to say that our own countrymen in this part of the country are taking care to warn their shareholders that the purchase of calves and young stock from the south is courting disaster.
This is the situation that has been allowed to grow in the last 12 months by the failure of the Minister to bring about an end to the dispute with the veterinary profession. Exports to the Six Counties have almost ceased for the same reason. More recently the very influential British farmers' chairman, Sir Harry Plum, issued a very dire warning which I would interpret as a notice to the Irish Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries to take his finger out of his mouth and get on with the business of settling this strike at once.
The Irish store cattle trade is still of great value to the cattle industry here. We would naturally prefer to see an increasing number of our own cattle being processed in our own factories but until such time as the commercial practices of both the co-operatives and the privately-owned factories have been improved, possibly by legislation, it will be necessary for the live export trade to be maintained in order to keep some price discipline on the meat factories.
We raise this question against the background that has been there all the time, against which we have been attempting to eradicate these two diseases in particular.
On the 1st January, 1978, we will have entered a completely new situation. Unless the situation alters very dramatically in our favour in the meantime—and there is no reason to expect that it will—our cattle, either alive or dead, will not be able to gain entry into the EEC, and that means Britain as well as the remaining seven continental countries. During the past 12 months we have seen our seed stock, the calf herd, robbed, totally uncontrolled or interfered with. Even that trade, destructive as it was to the real interests of Irish farmers, will have to be stopped. The overall drop in the numbers of herd in the past 12 months alone adds up to a staggering 533,000 cattle. If these cattle are valued at a very conservative £200 per head, one will realise the size of the hammering the cattle industry has taken at the hands of the Government.
To the bitter amusement of the nation the Tánaiste suddenly discovered that what the country needs is an economic plan. He has been sitting quite happily in Government for the past three years and only last night it struck him that we needed an economic plan. We should probably say "better late than never". If there is to be an economic plan, if there is to be a rebuilding after the wreckage wrought by the Coalition Government to the economy generally over the past three years, it must be based on the agricultural industry.
About 24 per cent of our work force is engaged directly in agriculture and a further 22 per cent are engaged in directly processing the products of their labours. This makes approximately 45 per cent of the work force engaged in these industries. In all these areas, there must be a sharp slide. This party warned the Government almost 12 months ago that if there was to be a continuation of this totally uncontrolled exploitation of the cattle industry, in the long run it would amount to massive disemployment in the meat industry. This is upon us now. The Government statistics show a drop in numbers of every type of cattle. Cows in the dairy herd were down nearly 50,000; other cows were down by 127,000. These figures, supplied by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, are not reliable because they are taken from a very small sample. The reality is that about one-third of all the cows in the country were slaughtered last year and a great many of those were in calf. In the case of heifers under one year, the drop is 100,000. That is the kind of management we are dealing with at present.
As I said, it has just struck the Tánaiste that an economic plan is needed. It should strike other members of the Government, and possibly the Tánaiste too, that the first thing to do is to start rebuilding the herd to the level it was in 1973, and thereafter continue its expansion to a target figure of ten million cattle of all kinds. They need not necessarily stop at that figure. There will be no economic plan for recovery unless we begin with the cattle industry. Both the dairy and meat processing industries depend on the prosperity and well-being of the cattle industry, as does the prosperity of the country as a whole.
It must be plain even to the members of the Government, none of whom has any direct connection with agriculture and possibly ought not to be expected to appreciate the value of the industry to the country, that the resource upon which our eventual recovery from the havoc wrought by the Coalition must be based on the rebuilding of the cattle industry. Even the former pace of eradication before the present dispute occurred was unsatisfactory. The rate of disease eradication during our administration was not fast enough but it was a great deal faster than the backward sliding we are experiencing now.
If any realistic attempt is to be made in reaching the EEC deadline by 1978—or even by 1980—the Government will have to face this reality. A totally new approach to the general question of animal disease eradication will have to be made. For this purpose, a special task force will have to be created. They will have to enlist the participation of every veterinary surgeon in the country. It will also necessitate the participation of lay staff. This, I understand, is the nub of the dispute between the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries and the veterinary profession. It has been thrashed about stupidly and aimlessly for the past six or eight months without any achievement.
The Minister must face the reality that he is dealing with a hard, tough trade union who will not take dictation from him or anybody else. It would be wrong to say he is dealing with people who would put the welfare of the country in jeopardy for their own selfish means. That would be an over-statement and possibly a false one. That being the case, we must take a new look at the approach we are making to animal health. We will require to double the efforts made prior to the dispute. I would call it a lock out rather than a strike. Unless we do that, we will not be able to export cattle after 1978, and that is unthinkable. It may be that it will be possible to negotiate some cheapjack rate for our products after that. That is not what we want. We want to get top quality prices for our top quality produce. They will not be top quality unless we eliminate disease. Far from there being no disease elimination over the past 12 months, there has been very rapid regression and a sliding back into the uncontrolled disease situation which obtained many decades ago before any attempts at disease eradication were made.
The Minister has been doing a Duke of York act for the past 12 months on the question of lay staff. The original proposal was that lay staff should be used for the taking of blood samples in the brucellosis scheme. The veterinary profession object that this is a job of a professional kind which they and they alone should carry out. This question is unresolved. There must be a settlement. There must be a compromise. The compromise I would suggest to the Minister and the veterinary profession is this: in the context of a new and vigorous and properly financed assault on animal disease, the incorporation of lay staff for the carrying out of non-professional tasks within this new animal disease task force.
The first task one would think of for using this type of staff would be the mobilisation of herds for blood sampling and testing and reading. The common practice on the ground, the common experience on the ground, is that when the veterinary practitioner arrives to test the herd, as often as not he is late for his appointment because of previous bad staff work and the herd may have been released again and have to be rounded up again. Expensive veterinary time is frittered away while the herd is rounded up, put in the crush and made ready for his professional attentions.
I should like to see lay staff doing the business of ear tag reading and the recording of ear tags, and the recording of tests, and test measurements in the case of bovine tuberculosis, skin measurements and, in general, the courier type of work which is so necessary in properly organised disease eradication. I do not see why this would be unacceptable to the Minister or the veterinary profession. If the Government show their earnestness, and the reality of their realisation of the vital urgency of the expansion of animal disease eradication, when the need for lay staff is demonstrated, the veterinary profession will accept it.
For the moment before accelerated eradication takes place—and it must take place immediately or soon, at any rate—the lay staff ought not to be called upon to do any type of professional work. Thereafter I would expect and hope that the demands on professional skills and time would be such that, with the acceleration of disease eradication, the veterinary profession would recognise that certain types of work might then be undertaken by the lay staff, provided always there were no veterinary surgeons available to do that work. The field of animal disease eradication is so wide that any fears the veterinary profession might have of working themselves out of a job, as it were, would be groundless.
I do not think the Government will last much longer. I think the task will be ours. I hope when we get the chance we will have a major assault on animal disease. The reason I would entertain that hope is this. If we do not have it, we are letting down the main resource this country has got for economic recovery. We will not be able to do it unless we get serious about it. I do not want to dwell again on the appalling destruction which has been wrought by the Government on the cattle herds in the past three years. It is intolerable that even this Government should contemplate its continuation. Certainly when the change comes, and coming it is, it will not be tolerated.
The Minister's attitude, as far as one can read it throughout this whole affair, his approach to the veterinary profession, is as if he were saying to them: "Do as I say or else." That approach to a union of the strength of the veterinary union is simply not realistic, and the pawns in the game are the herd owners. One suspects that, lurking somewhere at the back of the lethargy of the Government in all this, is a secret rejoicing in the Department of Finance and by the Minister, Deputy Ryan, at the enormous amounts of money he has not got to spend buying reactors out of herds which have been tested and reactors identified.
It is the blindest Mad Hatter economics one could possibly imagine but one suspects, because of the total inertia of the Government that there must be some secret acceptance: "Damn it all, even if the herds go to pot, and if the work of the Fianna Fáil Governments over the past 21 years is to be set at nought, look at all the reactors we do not have to buy. Look at all the millions we have saved. We can dish this money out to the people to purchase their votes," as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach said. The Government have no hesitation and no compunction about lavishing hundreds of millions of pounds higgledy-piggledy on what Deputy Kelly, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, says is the purchase of votes for the next election. When the health of Ireland's No. 1 national asset is at stake evidently no money is to be spent. This is a nice cameo of the savage cynicism of the Government. It falls to our lot for the time being to point out from this side of the House that we recognise this cynicism and condemn it.
The Minister and the veterinary unions have no right to hold this country up to ransom. Having said that, I want to say without any reservation that this party believe that the onus is on the Minister, and on the Minister alone because of the office he holds, for the immediate settlement of this strike. This strike can be settled. Whatever the difficulties are the contemplation of a continuation of the strike for another week, or another month, is unthinkable. Even though members of the Government might not have a personal commitment in the cattle trade they have no right to wreck the efforts made by the herd owners under the direction of successful Governments—almost all Fianna Fáil—in eliminating animal disease.
The progress made in the case of bovine tuberculosis in 21 years is in jeopardy again, particularly in Kilkenny and Waterford. Those counties are in dire need of special attention, possibly by annual testing, until bovine tuberculosis has been eradicated. However, nothing has been done and the Minister, in his extraordinary manner, seems, like Pontius Pilate, to wash his hands and say he is not guilty; it is not his baby. The responsibility is the Minister's alone. He should incorporate lay staff, with the co-operation of the veterinary profession, to carry out unprofessional jobs. He should concurrently undertake to make a real attack on animal disease and not just mark time and keep the disease eradication programme ticking over. The EEC door has been shut in our face and there is only one way to open it, by a serious disease eradication programme. If we show we are serious the door may be opened. It is not realistic to expect that we will have attestation status, especially in brucellosis, before the 1st January, 1978.
The Government should demonstrate to the veterinary union that they are in earnest about carrying out a realistic attack on animal disease. If they could be convinced that their professional future was assured they would take a different view of the question of the lay staff but it is not on to use lay staff for professional purposes with the low intensity campaign that is being operated at present. The field of veterinary medicine is vast as is the field of disease eradication. There are so many epizootic diseases that have not been thought of at all. One that comes to mind immediately is mastitis.
One could contemplate the creation of a national veterinary health scheme, possibly contributory. I hope the day that will come about is not too far off. I hope when the management of agricultural affairs passes into our hands again we will examine that idea in detail. We need a massive attack on animal disease, a proving to the veterinary profession of the sincerity of the Government. If this is demonstrated, the co-operation of the veterinary profession will be won. I suggest that the Minister fall back to using the staff for non-professional work only. I accept that there will be a need for a great many lay staff and in that the Minister's position was probably the right one but it will not be possible to use lay staff for professional duties in the present situation. I appeal to the Minister to face his responsibility. A further continuation of this strike is impossible and unthinkable. The strike must end now.
