Agency's move to Meath may be delayed again

THE long delayed move of the EU's new animal and plant health inspection agency to Grange, to Meath, may be delayed yet again.

The chairman of the European Parliament's Special Committee of Inquiry into BSE, Mr Reiman Boege, called yesterday for a postponement of the decision to set up the new centre in Ireland until after the committee has reported in January.

The committee is likely to recommend a radical restructuring of the EU's supervision of animal and human health in the light of the experience of the handling of BSE.

The so called Phytosanitary Inspection and Control Agency will employ some 40 people in its first year, some 30 of them inspectors, whose job is to monitor veterinary and plant health standards in the Union. It will also monitor standards in non EU countries wishing to export to the EU.

The agency will be funded by a 1 per cent levy on fees charged by member states for veterinary inspections. Mr Boege, a German Christian Democrat, says he will be speaking to the parliament's rapporteur on the agency, Mr Valverde Lopez, on the issue this week. Parliament does not have the right to block the move but has the right to give a formal opinion on the issue. To ignore the opinion in this case might be politically embarrassing.

The row over the agency, now resolved at ministerial level except for a formal vote, was over the refusal of veterinary officials to move to rural Ireland from Brussels. Since it is in his Dail constituency, the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, has more than the usual interest in the project.

Originally intended to be a branch of the Commission, employing inspectors already on the organisation's books, the new agency will now be a semi autonomous body and able to recruit its own staff.

Officially the delays in reaching a final decision on the agency were put down to "technical reasons", but sources inside the Commission said that well paid officials were not happy to move to Ireland, where, some of them said, they would not be able to find sufficiently good schools for their children.