Appeals for information from suspected smugglers for any information about the source of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Louth is unlikely to disturb the conscience of any guilty parties.
The 99 per cent of the farming community which is "clean" believe, like many of the investigation team, that their livelihoods have been put at risk by the people not co-operating.
It has emerged that a man who had inside knowledge of where the infected consignment of sheep from Carlisle were distributed in the Republic, did not reveal any of this information until last week - nearly four weeks after the Meigh outbreak and two days after the Louth case was confirmed.
He lives outside the jurisdiction and cannot be prosecuted here. He is a known associate of a smuggler in north Louth who has denied to the Garda that he knows anything about sheep from Meigh being brought into Louth.
The authorities still believe that infection was the result of either direct contact between animals, or that a human who was in contact with the Meigh sheep carried the virus on their clothes into Louth, which was passed to the flock at Proleek.
It must be stressed that Mr Michael Rice, who owned the infected flock, is in no way suspected or believed to have been involved in any illegal activity and is highly respected.
The Garda has already established that 10 of the so-called missing sheep were taken from Meigh to a farm in Longwood, Co Meath, and then exported to France. Another 68 went from Meigh to a farm in Dromin, Co Louth. Other sheep went to two farms in Laois.
The investigation team is still pursuing the possibility that the remainder were brought into Louth by the smuggler.
An additional factor with which the Garda and the Department of Agriculture have to deal is the traditional association between subversives and smugglers and the reluctance of anyone to pass on information about either.
The possibility that anyone who may provide the authorities with such information could become a target of legitimate authorities, such as the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Revenue Commissioners, is one reason for the reticence.
However, of greater concern is that they could subsequently be targeted by their own, some of whom are alleged to favour a rougher kind of justice.
The massive containment operation along the Border has halted the transport and therefore the income of smugglers. In terms of their lost "income" - all illegal - they are suffering as much if not more than the rest of the Border community and are likely to give priority to returning to work rather than assisting the the Garda or the Department on the source of the infection.
Yesterday afternoon there were a number of calls for people with information on the source of the Proleek case to come forward. "Anybody with such information has a duty to speak up and try and take this awful chalice away from us," the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, said.
Sheep farmer Mr John El more said: "If someone is not co-operating, they are extremely irresponsible and putting our futures and livelihoods at stake. If they knew, their silence has prevented a remedy."
Test results are expected to day on the samples taken from a farm just within the 10-km exclusion zone established around the first case at Proleek. If it becomes the second confirmed case in Louth, the virulent nature of foot-and-mouth disease means an entire cull of all susceptible animals in the Cooley peninsula will follow.