The three latest cases of BSE would seem to confirm the Department of Agriculture's belief that the suspected source of the disease - contaminated meat-and-bone meal - has not been fed to Irish cattle since early 1997.
Department scientists have been anxiously monitoring the age profile of the cases which are now being recorded and the hope is that no animals under four years old will be found with the disease.
The cases confirmed in the past week were in older cattle. The youngest animal was a five-year-old suckler cow. There were also two seven-year-olds.
That brings to 67 the number of cases recorded so far this year and while this is five more than at this time last year, it confirms the statistic that the majority of cases are now being diagnosed in five- and six-year- old cattle.
At a briefing last week, Ms Hazel Sheridan, a senior veterinary officer with the Department, said 65 per cent of the cases now being found were in this age group. The age graph, she said, was going in the right direction, indicating that no contaminated meat-and-bone meal had been fed to Irish cattle since early 1997.
However, the Department, which now has 663 recorded cases since 1989 when the disease was first diagnosed here, expects that for the foreseeable future the number of cases found here will rise slightly. That is because active surveillance - in other words, the Department actively sought out cases instead of waiting to have them reported - began in the year 2000.
Ireland introduced the active surveillance programme ahead of an EU demand that all its member-states should do so and in the first year of operation here uncovered seven of the 149 cases recorded that year.
So far this year there have been 10 cases identified in the areas where surveillance is carried out, in so-called "fallen" cows, which were being sent for destruction.
The introduction of the ENFER test which can identify Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in cattle and is mandatory on cattle over 30 months, has also found six cases of the disease.
In all, 140,231 cattle over 30 months old have been examined since the test was introduced in meat plants on January 2nd last. All but six of the tests have been negative.