The end of year figures for BSE in Irish cattle show a continuing decline in the numbers being detected.
The total number of cases found this year dropped to 25, compared with a total of 41 cases for the year 2006.
This decline has continued since 2002, when the highest number of cases on record, 333, was recorded.
This fell to 182 in 2003, 126 in 2004 and 69 cases in 2005, reflecting the view the disease was now confined to a sub-set of older animals which may have been exposed to contaminated cattle feed.
While the feeding of meat and bonemeal (MBM) to cattle was banned when the disease first surfaced here in the 1990s, the disease persisted until the manufacture of pig and poultry feed, which contained MBM, was segregated from cattle feed in 2000.
Technically, there should be no cases of BSE in animals born after that date but some cases do occur in younger animals, but these are becoming rarer and the age profile of the infected animals gets higher each year.
Extensive testing for the disease is carried out annually and over 3.5 million tests have been carried out up to the end of 2005 and a further 845,000 in 2006. Figures are not yet available for last year.
Meanwhile, scientists investigating the human form of BSE in London said a 39-year-old woman died of a previously undiagnosed form of the brain-wasting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) disease.
Her case has raised fears that this heralds a new wave of patients suffering from the devastating condition which has been linked to the consumption of BSE-infected beef. To date, 166 people in the UK have died from vCJD, far fewer than the most pessimistic predictions at the height of the BSE epidemic in the 1990s.
The case of the woman, who died in 2000, appeared in yesterday's edition of New Scientist magazine.
She began to fall ill in January 1999, having blurred vision and an aversion to bright lights. She deteriorated rapidly and died 14 months after the initial symptoms.
Researchers found her brain had an unusual pattern of disease and carried out a genetic analysis. This showed that her version of the prion protein was different from all other previous victims of the infection.
In vCJD, the patient's own prion protein is subverted by the infection, forming clumps that fatally clog the brain. (Additional reporting: PA)