The catastrophe is on the doorstep, heralded last night by France's temporary ban on animal exports from Ireland. The first case of foot-and-mouth disease on the island of Ireland was confirmed by the Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture yesterday, at a sheep farm at Meigh in south Armagh. Part of that sheep consignment, bought at a market in Carlisle in England more than a week ago, made its way illegally to the Kepak factory in Co Roscommon for slaughter last Tuesday. A criminal investigation is now under way into the circumstances surrounding it. The inspections of suspect animals in Wexford and Nenagh have, mercifully, proved negative.
The Tanaiste and the Minister for Agriculture were at pains to point out yesterday that there is no foot-and-mouth disease in the Republic of Ireland. But the fear grows that the worst may yet come to pass. The Ceann Comhairle, Mr Seamus Pattison, took the unusual step of conceding to the Opposition's request to suspend normal business yesterday to have a debate on a matter of major public importance. With each passing day, it has become clearer that foot-and-mouth disease is a national issue, ironically uniting the island as nothing before. A measure of the seriousness of the situation may be the way in which the Dail yesterday rose above party politics. The leading speakers for Fine Gael and the Labour Party, Mr Alan Dukes and Mr Willie Penrose, justly prodded the Government that there was a gap between official pronouncements and practices on the ground. The last outbreak in the Republic occurred in 1941, Mr Penrose said, a full 60 years ago, outside the experience of most farmers on the land today. Mr Dukes said that fact alone was important in terms of the identification of the disease. Only now, however, is a leaflet drop to all farmers with advice on the symptoms of the disease being organised.
For its part, the Government moved up a gear in its prevention measures yesterday. The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, published details of the response plan activated by his Department since the first confirmed case of foot-and-mouth in Essex on February 20th. It looks impressive on paper but anecdotal evidence suggests that the reality on the ground has been very different. The Government, incredibly, moved to set up a task force of interests across different Departments only when the first case was suspected in Northern Ireland. The suspicion grows that the Government relied too much on outside authorities, principally the British Ministry of Agriculture, to protect the national interest and do their work for them in the early days of the crisis. The first action taken here was to impose a temporary ban on imports of animals from the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland on February 21st, the day after the first British case was confirmed. It is a signal irony, in the days of the Belfast Agreement and the North/South dimensions flowing from it, that old partitionist thinking dominated in these critical days, rather than an all-Ireland stance of keeping British animals off the island. The Northern Minister, Ms Brid Rogers, got the British Ministry of Agriculture to agree to her request to stop the export of animals from Britain to Northern Ireland a day later. There is no border between the North and South of Ireland when it comes to the movement of animals. The Government is, belatedly, coming to recognise that no price is too high to pay to keep the plague of foot-and-mouth disease out of the Republic. Every resource must be put into sealing the suspect areas, whether on the border or elsewhere. Official efforts so far are sadly unconvincing. If the Republic is spared it will be attributable more to providence than the efforts of Government and officialdom.