The Department of Agriculture is considering reimposing a charge on its foot-and-mouth disease telephone helplines because of the number of crank calls it has been receiving since they became "freephone", writes Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, told a press conference yesterday that initially there had been a charge on the public who wanted to use the helplines it had set up. "We reduced the price to zero and the number of crank and perverted calls increased almost at once," he said.
Some of the callers had claimed they had sick animals with lesions and foot-and-mouth disease and all these claims had to be investigated, he said. That was "very very serious" and a lot of time had been wasted.