Joe Walsh was like a prisoner manacled to a rock while the tide rose around him yesterday. The threat of a foot-and-mouth outbreak was so immediate and dreadful in its implications that the Minister for Agriculture and Food appealed for national solidarity.
Manifestation of the disease in this State would close "several markets" to our agricultural products for "several years". And we would lose our special disease-free status. If outbreaks lasted three to six months, then farmers would have to get an income during that period and he would have to discuss what could be done with the European Commission. He didn't mention the impact on hauliers or on agribusiness. That fell to Willie Penrose of the Labour Party, who pictured the livelihood of 200,000 people being put at risk. An industry worth £5 billion, he said, employed 45,000 members of SIPTU alone. If ever an issue welded together the interests of urban and rural Ireland, this was it.
Alan Dukes foresaw social life in rural Ireland coming to an end in special exclusion zones if the disease took hold. And he urged the Government to behave as if there had already been an outbreak. If strict anti-disease precautions were implemented now, we would be in a far better position to limit the spread of any outbreak. But while the sword of Damocles remained suspended, the Opposition spokesmen pulled their punches. They pointed to failures in the Government's response to the outbreak of the disease in England. But there was no point in blaming the Government for something that had not happened here. Later on there would be plenty of time to put the boot in.
The heart of our indigenous industry was under threat. And if cardiac arrest followed, then Charlie McCreevy's budgetary arithmetic would go down the tubes. The Government could be back in Brussels, traditional cap in hand, if the Celtic Tiger went into intensive care. Worries generated by a decline in US-based dot.com industries would be relegated to the ha'penny place if there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.
The politics of it all concentrated minds wonderfully. And the smart money has begun to switch to an autumn general election. Mr McCreevy's announcement, last Wednesday, that the Budget will be held on December 5th, rather than an expected date in September, led Fine Gael to suspect an October election. It didn't think the Government would close off its options by drifting into 2002. In the meantime, political events have been put on hold. Michael Noonan's cancellation of the Fine Gael Ardfheis this weekend was all that might be expected of a farmers' party. And the shelving of its tentative plans to hold an early by-election in Tipperary South showed the way the wind was blowing.
Fianna Fail is being forced to consider abandoning its Ardfheis in April. And, in the meantime, a range of social events will go by the board. Major sporting events have been cancelled. St Patrick's Day parades will not be held. People who engage in angling, hill walking and other outdoor pursuits have been asked to stay at home. In Government terms the matter was receiving the "utmost priority". But there were strange gaps in information concerning cross-Border traffic in potentially infected sheep; the failure of regulatory authorities to identify them as smuggled animals at a Roscommon abattoir and the apparent disappearance of 20 of those sheep between the abattoir and the infected Armagh farm.
Where Opposition spokesmen had probed and challenged, Des O'Malley of the Progressive Democrats brought a lump hammer to the job. His personal war with the Department of Agriculture went on, in spite of being in Government. This was just another example of the failure of the regulatory authorities, he said. What had happened at Rathkeale in 1990/91 seemed to him to have happened at Roscommon. And it had been "entirely wrong" for the Department to sanction the importation of horses after foot-and-mouth had been confirmed in England.
THE Minister accepted the delivery of anti-disease measures by his Department had not always lived up to aspirations. But if foot-and-mouth took hold here, he suggested, the fault would lie elsewhere. He described as "treasonous" a newspaper headline that suggested the disease had come South and said it had led to 60 countries trying to ban Irish farm produce. The importation of sheep from England to Northern Ireland had led to the outbreak there, he complained, and the full rigour of the law would be brought to bear on any criminal activity.
In passing, he gave a swipe to the Irish Farmer's Association for resisting the registration of farmers and the tagging of sheep in this State. And if there wasn't sufficient disinfectant available, then the fault lay with the large co-operatives.
Mr Walsh was a man under severe pressure. Having been away in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday, he was running to catch up. Confirmation of the outbreak in Northern Ireland had raised public concern to a new pitch and the near-inevitability of it coming South was finally recognised.
Labour Party criticism of the Taoiseach for attending official functions in Wales, because of the presence of the disease there, brought a rushed announcement that Mr Ahern would attend a special Cabinet meeting on his return to consider developments.
Tomorrow the Taoiseach will take part in a special Dail debate on the subject. And, no doubt, Michael Noonan and Ruairi Quinn will try to raise a few lumps on him.