The Government has been criticised for not calling a meeting of the expert committee on foot-and-mouth disease over the Easter weekend.
Fine Gael said the expert group should have been assembled "as a matter of urgency" following the latest outbreaks of the disease in the North in Tyrone and Antrim.
The party's deputy spokesman on agriculture, Senator Tom Hayes, said: "Less than two weeks ago the Department published an indicative timetable for the lifting of certain restrictions subject to two main conditions: that, in the interim, there are no confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth on the island of Ireland; and [that] protocols are agreed with the expert group.
"The situation has seriously deteriorated since Good Friday, yet the expert group has not met to review its own instructions or to consider any new measures to protect the Irish economy," he added.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Noel Davern, commented: "We have their [expert group] recommendations in place and strongly in place."
He pointed out that Ardboe, Co Tyrone, was a lot farther from the Border than Meigh, Co Armagh, the site of the North's first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
A spokesman for the Irish Farmers' Association said farmers were not happy with controls in the North. The IFA was concerned that the Stormont Department of Agriculture was not slaughtering animals quickly enough.
Asked if he shared the IFA's concerns, the Minister for Agriculture said: "We have enough to do in our own jurisdiction . . . It's a matter for people in other jurisdictions to do their job."
Mr Walsh, speaking in Co Cork, emphasised that a "very stringent code of practice" would have to be maintained by all organisations staging sporting events.
The organisers of sporting fixtures had a duty to take all necessary measures, including disinfection, to prevent the spread of the disease.
Mr Walsh added: "We just have to do that bit extra. It would be an awful picture if the devastation we have seen in Britain on our TV screens was visited on this country."