A query on the number of "transsexual" cattle in Ireland was levelled at the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Mr John Malone, during a Dail Public Accounts Committee meeting yesterday.
Mr Sean Ardagh, ail deputy (FF, Dublin South Central) had been dealing with the Comptroller and Auditor's report on the Department's 1996 accounts, which found that female animals were being registered as males for the purpose of collecting premiums.
Female animals recorded as male in the annual bovine TB tests were issued with replacement identity cards by the District Veterinary Office without investigation of the gender change or if premiums had been incorrectly paid.
Mr Malone told Mr Ardagh that most of the cases uncovered in the Comptroller and Auditor's report had happened because of human error. Vets had to record the eartag numbers in sometimes difficult working areas.
The system, he said, was now being changed given that for the last two years farmers had been tagging their own calves at birth and these tags were being computerised.
He said computerisation was now being widely used in the Department and a system of full traceability was almost in place. In response to a number of urban deputies, Mr Malone said the vast majority of farmers were honest but since 1992 they had had to deal with a multiplicity of formfilling to claim EU money.
Mr Malone also told the committee that he expected a case brought by Ireland against the EU for imposing fines of £50 million for irregularities in the intervention scheme in 1990 and an £18 million disallowance for multiple tendering practices to begin early next year.
He said the Department had already paid the fines to the EU and if it won the case in the European Court of Justice the money would be returned to Ireland. However, it was not possible for the State to reclaim any of the money involved from the companies at the centre of the irregularities. Mr Malone was pressed by the chairman of the committee, Mr Jim Mitchell (FG, Dublin Central) on whether the huge sums being spent on eradicating bovine TB were justified. The secretary said Ireland would lose its beef and dairy markets if the tests did not take place.
"However, I could not defend the scheme as a success story," said Mr Malone, who revealed that 30,000 reactor cattle were removed from Irish herds this year. He said that three cattle in every 1,000 failed the TB test this year. A decade ago the figure was four in every 1,000. He added that brucellosis infection had doubled in the past year and there were now 400 restricted herds.