THE Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, has said he is to ask the Government for £14 million to put a cattle tracing package quickly in place.
Since the middle of the year, a special departmental committee has been examining computer packages which can identify each animal in the State and its location.
That committee, under the chairmanship of Mr Michael Dowling, secretary of the Department, has been examining the most modern system of this kind in the world, the Northern Ireland scheme. Yesterday the committee put together a package which will be presented to the Government as quickly as possible and which is likely to cost £14 million.
This will involve bringing all the information about the seven million cattle in the Republic, currently held in a number of computers, into one computer system.
Department sources stressed yesterday that this programme would be nationwide and would not be just for Cos Cork, Tipperary and Monaghan.
The Minister, who said in the Dail yesterday he would travel to Russia as soon as he could to try to have the partial ban lifted is under increasing pressure to bring in an identification scheme.
Under current regulations, an animal is identified by an ear tag. The tag identifies the animal, its herd and its county and will be used to identify beef from the excluded counties.
On his return from the US yesterday, the president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr John Donnelly, said the Government's policy on BSE was "in tatters
He led IFA delegations from the three counties involved to meet deputies from booth Fine Gael and Fianna Fail at the Dail.
Following the meetings, Mr Donnelly said both parties had given a commitment that they would fully support the immediate introduction of a total quality assurance scheme involving full computerisation and traceability.
Last night, following a meeting between the Minister and the IFA, Macra na Feirme and ICOS, the umbrella group for the co operative movement, Mr Donnelly said the Minister had told them he would be putting in place the quality assurance scheme within weeks. He said this would cover traceability, where the animals were born, movements, and which tests were carried out.
Mr Donnelly added that they had impressed on Mr Yates the difficulties and anger created by the three county ban. They would also be seeking from the Department more information on the labelling of cattle rations.