Six years of analysis and investigation have failed to discover why hundreds of cattle and horses died on a handful of Limerick farms in the early 1990s. We should not be surprised at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) inability to find the cause.
The EPA was asked by Government to lead a comprehensive scientific study of the Askeaton animal deaths in February, 1995. This was close to a decade after the first animal became ill and long after any transient cause was available for detection.
Disappointment and annoyance were palpable yesterday in Limerick where the most serious problems occurred from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. People wanted answers but these were not delivered. The research was undertaken too late, the trail had gone cold.
The report acknowledges it did not deliver what Askeaton wanted. It accepts the findings "have not been as conclusive or precise as the two farmers directly involved, as well as the wider community in the Askeaton area, would have wished".
The greatest failure of the affair, however, is not the lack of answers but the lack of response by officials to the earliest complaints from the farmers. Concerns about animal illness arose in Askeaton in the late 1980s and can be documented as far back as the early 1990s.
The Somers, then the Ryan families, and later the Sheehys, who had a 300-acre farm and a stud, sought help from officials to discover why animals were becoming sick and dying. The assumption locally was that the nearby Aughinish Alumina plant or perhaps the ESB's Moneypoint or Tarbert power plants were polluting the environment.
Teagasc assessed the Somers's farm early in 1993 and Limerick County Council commissioned a survey by Trinity College experts later that year. It was not until January 1995, however, that the Mid-Western Health Board responded to local worries that human illness might be linked to that of animals. The study led by the EPA began in February 1995.
Overall, there was a very slow response to the original complaints. The report also accepts there was a lack of specialised resources that could have helped find the reasons behind the animal deaths. The cause of the problems on the Somers's farm could not be identified, the report said, "both because of the retrospective nature of the investigations and the very limited involvement of specialist veterinary pathology services during the period when the problems were at their worst, i.e., from about 1988 to 1993".
The report is long on volume but short on answers. It finds no evidence for elevated levels of airborne pollution from the ESB or Aughinish. Pollution discharge records are available from the time illness was first detected in animals.
A "retrospective epidemiological study" accepts that animal illness occurred. This is not in dispute. The report, however, casts doubt on whether there was human illness, as was claimed by Askeaton farmers in the early 1990s.
The study found no evidence for increased cancer risk and mortality levels overall were lower in the region than the national average. The only exception was in the 0-14-year-old age bracket where mortality was slightly higher than the average for Limerick.
One controversial element is a suggestion that the farm environment, including out-wintering of pregnant cows on the Ryan farm, "may have contributed to the serious animal health problems in that case".
Practices may not have been ideal and may have caused problems but for the EPA report to suggest this was a cause of the illness and death on the Ryan farm is speculative. The EPA has no evidence to prove this because it wasn't there when the animals died. Nor does it explain animal deaths on the other farms.
In 1998, the EPA delivered a very useful interim document, a protocol to fast track the investigation of serious incidents of animal or human health. The report suggested that if the protocol had been in place when problems at Askeaton first arose "these investigations would not have been necessary".
Attempts have already begun by the Green Party and others to dismiss the report, amidst claims that it is a whitewash. This is unfair and unbalanced.
The work was carried out by many researchers from Teagasc, the Veterinary Laboratory Service, the Mid-Western Health Board and the EPA. They would have applied great care to the data and their analysis, knowing the report would be so scrutinised.