There was some easing of the advice on travelling in and out of the UK yesterday when the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, said visitors from urban areas were welcome.
While the situation in the UK was still "very dangerous", the expert committee advising him on controls had indicated there would be a low risk of spread of foot-and-mouth disease from urban people coming from Britain provided proper procedures were followed.
This would be welcome news to the hard-pressed tourism industry, he said, but he warned that he was advising intending visitors from the UK coming from infected areas, who had had contact with susceptible animals or the countryside, not to travel to Ireland unless there were exceptional circumstances.
Mr Walsh said 15,316 sheep and 600 cattle had been culled in the Louth area, and there was co-operation with the Northern authorities to create "a corridor" between Proleek and Meigh. Any decision on whether the remainder of the Cooley peninsula would be moved into or not would be based on developments over the next few days.
He said since confirmation of the outbreak in Meigh a lot of work had been carried out in Proleek, in an effort to find out where that outbreak had come from.
"As well as that we have had a continuation of tracking of any sheep that came into this jurisdiction from the North of Ireland from February 1st to February 20th, before the controls came in along the Border.
"In relation to the outbreak in Proleek, we still have no hard information as to how that occurred. But inquiries are going on because it would be very, very important for us to know if it came from the second-next parish in Meigh or if there was some intermediate case."
On general tracing and tracking of sheep imported from the North and in some cases via Britain, information received late on Friday or early Saturday morning in relation to sheep suspected of having come in before February 21st was acted on immediately.
Culling and sampling took place on farms in Meath, Laois, Carlow and Wexford. That was completed on Sunday. There were no clinical symptoms, and some of the initial results were back following tests and proved to be negative, he said.
The total cull from these farms was 1,200 animals, and the total precautionary slaughtering or culling outside Co Louth since February 20th stood at 4,505 sheep and 220 cattle.
A total of 744 herds or flocks were under restriction in the State.
One consignment of 10 sheep was exported to France. "We have now established and have confirmed information that those sheep were rested at a lairage in France," he said.
"That lairage was the site of the first confirmed outbreak in France, and the sheep exported from this jurisdiction, when taken out of the trucks and rested in that lairage, were in contact with British sheep.
"These sheep came directly from Britain itself, and in our contact with the French authorities today, they accept that the second outbreak can be traced to that particular lairage and that is a clarification of the first situation where the French felt the outbreak could be traced to Irish sheep."