A "sizeable number of serious prosecutions" will flow from the ongoing investigations into livestock smuggling, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Noel Davern, promised last night.
He was speaking as yet more animals thought to have been smuggled from the North were found abandoned on a roadside in Tipperary. Identification tags had been removed from their ears, as in previous finds.
The Garda and the Department of Agriculture's special investigation unit, have now seized almost 70 cattle found in Tipperary in the last four weeks.
Mr Davern, who is based in south Tipperary, said the Department and the Garda were getting on top of the smuggling problem and this was helped by the outrage people felt over the possible spread of foot-and-mouth disease.
"A great deal of useful information has been phoned in to the confidential telephone lines which were set up by the Department and operated for the past two days. It will take some time to get through it," he said.
Mr Davern, who said the special investigation into smuggling had been ongoing since late last year, said both the "smugglers and the buyers are now beginning to feel the heat".
"That is why animals are being dumped - because people who purchased them want to avoid detection. These people should be driven out of farming once and for all," he said.
He challenged the Irish Farmers' Association to come forward with information on smuggling and other activities to protect the State from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth. "IFA claims to have 80,000 members and there must be some of them who know what was going on. They have 80,000 pairs of eyes and ears which can help us root out these criminals once and for all," he said.
He added that the extent of the illegal movement of animals had come as a surprise even to the investigators, and there was now the will and the legislation to rid the country of these illegal elements. In the North, the illegal movement of animals was continuing even in areas where foot-and-mouth disease had been confirmed, the North's Minister for Agriculture, Ms Brid Rodgers, confirmed yesterday.
She said she was "deeply concerned" by information that banned movements were occurring within the exclusion zone around Cushendall in the Glens of Antrim, the scene of the North's third confirmed case last week.
Her warning that such movement would harm the authorities' attempt to cope with the disease came as two more suspect cases were announced - in cattle on a farm in Ardboe, Co Tyrone, and in sheep in Ballintoy, Co Antrim. Precautionary culls were being carried out last night.
Meanwhile, in Dublin yesterday the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, announced the easing of some restrictions on farming, which has been paralysed by the threat of the disease since mid-February. The artificial insemination service will resume on Monday and the Minister is to allow marts to be used as assembly points for bringing animals for slaughter.
But Mr Walsh said he could not lift the current restrictions on all animal movement except for slaughter, because of the outbreaks in the North. He warned that he had reports of variable compliance with disinfecting procedures on farms.