Animal Diseases
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14
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Martin Kenny (SF), Sligo-Leitrim

I am not disagreeing with the Minister in that regard but the difficulty we have is that farmers who want to play ball and work with the system are finding it very difficult to do so because they do not understand it. It is not clear. The Minister said that being "clear and concise" was vital. It has not been made clear to farmers and they are very concerned that they do not know what impact this is going to have on them. That special line that was supposed to be set up needs to be working properly and farmers need to be communicated with. The Department has all the information. It knows every farmer and what their herds are. It knows what categories they fall into. It needs to communicate that across the board to everybody so that, similar to the marts, everybody is clear on where they stand. I know that the marts are vital to this but we should not be in a situation where the Department of agriculture is implementing a strategy and depending on what are private entities - the marts around the country - to communicate what that strategy is. We need to have another way of doing that. That is the difficulty people have. Everybody wants to co-operate and work with this. We just need a bit of clarity around it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-14