Vol. 553 No. 2
176 Mr. Deenihan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development if he will issue the long awaited guidelines to Veterinary Ireland regarding the dairy herd and beef herd certificate schemes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13484/02]
The animal health requirements for dairy cows are set out in Directive 92/46/EEC and in the Statutory Instrument No. 9 of 1996 and the certificate reflects this. Individual veterinarians must, of course, use their own professional judgment when certifying individual herds. Inspection and certification of dairy herds has already been carried out on a countrywide basis.
As regards the national beef assurance scheme, the position is that the traceability elements have been fully operational since January 2000. It was envisaged that other elements of this scheme would be undertaken this year in tandem with the annual round of testing. In this regard, detailed discussions took place with Veterinary Ireland and its predecessor organisation over a long period concerning the arrangements for the inspection of farms. A Protocol for the conduct of the inspections was agreed with both Veterinary Ireland and the representative farming organisations late last year. There was also agreement that the inspections should be carried out by the testing veterinary surgeon at the time of the annual herd test. However while arrangements were put in place to have inspections under the scheme commenced in March in tandem with the 2002 annual round of testing, only a small number of inspections have taken place to date because of resistance to implementation of the scheme mainly by veterinarians whose union is seeking a centralised payment system the costs involved.
In this context, the legislation passed by the Oireachtas establishing the scheme clearly provides that the cost of securing a certificate of approval is the responsibility of the applicant. In addition, the Exchequer has already invested some €43 million in developing the cattle identification and tracing system that underpins the scheme, and costs continue to be incurred under this heading.
The national beef assurance scheme was designed to provide additional assurances to consumers and customers of Irish beef by demonstrating strict implementation of high standards across the production chain. The scheme is an important element in the drive to maintain marketplace in a sector recovering from serious difficulty. I am disappointed with the attitude of Veterinary Ireland and I would strongly urge them again to lend their full support to the scheme.
