A second case of foot-and-mouth disease has been confirmed in Northern Ireland, the Northern Department of Agriculture said last night.
Ms Brid Rodger's Department said the virus had been identified on a dairy farm in Co Tyrone. An immediate cull is under way. The Border with Northern Ireland was effectively being "resealed" last night after the Northern veterinary service confirmed to its Southern counterpart that tissue tests taken from the herd in Ardboe, Co Tyrone, had proved positive.
A spokesman for the Taoiseach said Mr Ahern was "disappointed" at the news and "particularly saddened for the people on the affected farm who had been given news just a few days ago that they were not affected by the disease".
He said the Government would continue co-operating with the Northern authorities "to ensure that the disease does not spread any further".
Early on Thursday, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland had said initial tests from Pirbright in London had been negative.
But shortly before 8 p.m. last night the Department of Agriculture in Dublin was told by officials in the North that further sampling from the pedigree herd had been positive.
"In view of this new evidence, I am not prepared to take any further chances and I have instructed the veterinary service to begin immediately to slaughter the animals on the outfarm which were showing symptoms yesterday and animals on another outfarm, " Ms Rodgers said.
The Government Task Force set up to manage the foot-and-mouth crisis in the Republic will meet later today to assess the implications for the national herd in the Republic.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, will be taking fresh advice on some non-farming activities but sporting events such as horse-racing are unlikely to be affected.
However, last night the Department had decided that the Border must be "resealed" and exports of food products coming to and through the South were stopped immediately.
"This is the gravest situation imaginable for the whole island. We will spare no cost in our efforts to combat this terrible threat to our farming community and the whole agricultural industry," Mid-Ulster MP Mr Martin McGuinness said.
While the Ardboe farm is at least 40 miles from the Border, there are major implications because this is the first time that cattle have caught the disease on the island.
Veterinary experts have been warning that a real danger exists that the disease may not have been spotted in sheep which can recover from the disease and go on to infect other animals.
There are other implications for Northern agriculture as many of its major dairy and pig processing units are in the Cookstown area and will be caught up in the exclusion zone around the Ardboe farm.
The IFA president, Mr Tom Parlon, said last night that confirmation of this latest foot-and-mouth outbreak in the North was "a major disappointment" and he was "very concerned at how it occurred".
He believed it was a "fresh outbreak" (probably unrelated to the one at Meigh, Co Armagh), which happened out of the blue and called for a major investigation into how it occurred.