Danny Healy-Rae Questions TB Causes and Urges Comprehensive Action

I'm glad to get the chance to come back in. Before I forget it, I want to thank you for coming in here. I suppose I'll continue with the TB. He seemed to say that there's been a drop. Can you attribute that drop to Kerry? Have you any recollection of Kerry going up or down? Because it's around myself and around my own local area, which expands a lot. Like, it seems to be rampant. I'm sorry, I don't have those. Again, biosecurity is a very broad area, and I don't have specific figures on each disease for each county, so maybe we can get back through the clerk. We can provide that via the committee. I'm sorry, if it was a TB-specific meeting, I would have all that information, but I don't, so I apologise. So we'll get back with the Kerry TB figures. We'd better do all the county. There's been a lot of mention there about people buying cattle, that that's one of the ways that you can... And I would agree with that. But in many of the instances of the farmers that have gone down around me, their dairy herds, and indeed one sucker herds that they never bought in any animal at all, it's always selling. They're breeding their own. And we can't understand that. Like, they're feeling now that it's the badger and the deer. Is there any other way? Like, we are blaming the deer and the badger very much. Yeah, look, obviously I can't comment on a specific case, because I don't know about it. But you're right, I mean, TB... What I found, having worked in it for years, each TB breakdown is different, both in terms of the disease and also the impact on the farmer, the farm family and the locality. We can't say, look, TB is spread via in-removament of infected cattle. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't. It can be residual infection. In other words, the old cow that was there in the breakdown that happened 10 years ago, who survived it. And sometimes, in the same way as you hear about it with people, you can have latent... You know, we hear about humans who get latent TB as a child, and then decades later they become diseased with it. That can happen with cattle, and you have occasionally a residual breakdown where the herd may have had TB years ago. And the other big way is, as you highlighted, via wildlife, principally badgers. And what can be tricky is that sometimes it's all three in a very tangled mishmash. So, for instance, you know, you may have... Again, I'm not saying about that herd, but say for the sake of argument, you had a herd which bought in some cattle at a mart, not knowing they'd come from a herd that was just de-restricted. They then have a breakdown. Badgers get infected from cattle, and cattle get infected with badgers, so that they may infect... Those cattle may infect local badgers. The badgers then pass it on to the next herd over, and then several years later, that herd has a residual breakdown. And you have this very intricate linking of roots. And if somebody says to me, look, will you just tell me, was it bought in? Was it residual? Was it badgers? Often the answer is, look, there is a range of these and you can't pull it, so perhaps, I don't know what that herd, was there TB in the area? Perhaps it was via badgers. Perhaps there was somebody who had a residual infection or bought in. And this is why one of the really useful tools that we use now is whole genome sequencing. So, of course, after the COVID pandemic, we're all experts in whole genome sequencing. You know, everybody knows all about that. And that is done, carried out by the department. And we carry out a lot of that for several years now. And it doesn't work in every outbreak because not every outbreak you get, you can grow enough bacteria from it. But where you can, it can be really useful if you can say, look, this strain of TB, the closest other strain is 100 kilometers away. Or it could be, look, the closest strain actually was identified in a badger last year. Or the closest strain was in this very herd six years ago. Now, sometimes you can't get that answer, but it shows that it's a complex epidemiology. And that's why I always have pains to say to people, look, there isn't one thing. It isn't, if we only knocked out one thing with TB. I mean, the other thing is, of course, you have biosecurity. So, for instance, sharing equipment or contract rearing is an issue where you send out the calves to be reared, especially if it's a dairy herd. Contract rearing is, of course, it maximizes your grass, your milking platform. But the risk is that when you send out your extremely expensive and valuable heifers, they come back a year and a half later, you may not know, and the contract rearing may not know, that they have been exposed to TB and are bringing it back in. So there's a range of ways. And the thing to do is to not pick one of them, but to look at all of these and say, can we address all these risks? And that's what our new TB action plan is going to attempt to do. And, of course, nothing will happen without the work and commitment of the farmers, of the veterinary practitioners of industry. And that's why it's really important that we're keen to work together on that. And, of course, that's what biosecurity is all about. Can I ask just one other small question, Cahillac? In relation to Lyme's disease, is it right, first of all, that it develops or spreads from under rotten timber? We have a lot of decaying timber. Is that the way the Lyme's disease develops? Again, I don't have a detailed briefing on Lyme's disease, and I would be hesitant to sort of just work off what I remember on it, unless, per you, specific knowledge of that. But are you, Avril? No? I think we can... Grasslander is something that people have to be aware of. If you need to... We do training for operators, people who are in fields. Like, if you're walking through forests or if you're walking through grassland in particular, you can get the ticks and get the bites. So, I'm not sure if it's specifically associated with that. There's many other sources of it. But, again, look, we do collaborate with the people, the agricultural consultants, just to make them aware of the issues that may be there, and we can share that with the group as well, and maybe address some of the issues that you've raised. It's very prevalent in areas like the National Park in Killarney. You know, and there's timber. It's forbidden to take any timber out of the National Park, whether it be fallen or else. But it's very, very prevalent that people get the Lyme's disease, and it's very hard to get any kind of a cure for it. It's not even accepted as a disease here in Ireland. There's no... GP will confirm that you have Lyme's disease, you have to go to Germany or go to America for treatment. And it has hurt many people and changed their lives completely, young mothers and young children even get it. So, any information that you can find out about it, you mentioned it to our chairman. And it's important to highlight, that's maybe more one for Department of Health or HSE colleagues, because, of course, we can share the guidance for foresters, but Lyme disease and human infections like that, I suppose that's not something, you know, our area is animals, plants, forests. So, I would say, beyond the guidance for foresters, we probably wouldn't provide information. I think that's more the human side. So, look, just to... It's important to say, look, you know, we won't go outside our remit and start advice. You know, as much as people joke about the vet could be the doctor, might get into a bit of trouble. We can raise it with the Department of Health anyway. So that... We can raise it with the Department of Health as well.