The full enormity of the foot and mouth crisis was brought home on this island yesterday when the Northern Ireland Minister for Agriculture, Mrs Brid Rodgers, said she believes a case of the disease has been identified close to the border in south Armagh. Ominously, sheep from the farm are reported to have been moved to this State. If the case is confirmed the outlook for Northern Ireland's agricultural base is grim. And it is possible that all agricultural products - North and South - may be placed under interdict by the EU.
The next few days will tell whether the disease has indeed penetrated the emergency measures put in place by the Government to prevent it entering the Republic. The portents are chilling. If it has, every citizen will be affected one way or another by the economic fallout. A five billion pounds agricultural and food export trade is jeopardised. Inevitably, too, there will be searching questions to answer as to whether such an outbreak could have been prevented by more timely and effective announcement and implementation of emergency measures. There have been too many examples of laxity and delay in putting them in place. Whatever the outcome, the Department of Agriculture has not covered itself with glory.
About half of Irish-owned industry is connected in some way with the agricultural sector, as befits this country's economic geography and competitive advantage. The large firms involved are a roll-call of successful achievement, alongside the primary producers of beef, milk, sheep, pigs and other livestock. This crisis is a salutary reminder of how important these sectors continue to be and of the necessity to protect their credibility and good name by efficient regulation of health and safety provisions. It reminds us, too, that Ireland's interests are deeply bound up with maintaining goodwill in the European Union, which plays such a large role in funding and governing agriculture and food safety.
Coming so soon after the BSE crisis this latest outbreak of virulent disease is bound to provoke a searching re-examination of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. It has subsidised an increasingly industrialised sector in a wide single market, relying more and more on extensive transport of animals to a point where efficient regulation and quality control is sacrificed to sheer quantitative growth. Profiteering and fraud are unduly encouraged. Consumer concerns too often take second place. And the sight of animals being mass slaughtered to put the system right raises profound ethical as well as health issues. Ireland faces as many opportunities as challenges when they are debated and negotiated.
In the meantime it is vital that preventive and containment measures are implemented scrupulously and effectively in coming days. That such a huge amount is at stake has been dramatically brought home by the cancellation of sporting and political events and the restrictions imposed on movements of people and animals yesterday. At this stage it can only be hoped they have been sufficient to stop the disease and that if there is foot and mouth on the island it can be contained and eradicated swiftly. If not, the results will be traumatic and it will take months and years to recover fully. There will be little public patience for breaches of the strict controls necessary to contain the disease or for demonstrable culpability in initiating or administering them.