Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Do any members wish to address issues in the financial statements? No. They are all okay. Can we agree and note the listing of accounts and financial statements? Agreed. As usual, the accounts and financial statements are published as part of our minutes.

Moving on to correspondence, as previously agreed, items that were not flagged for discussion at the meeting will be dealt with in accordance with the proposed actions that have been circulated, and decisions taken by the committee in relation to correspondence are recorded in the minutes of committee meetings and will be published on the committee's webpage.

Members have flagged one item for discussion under category B, correspondence from Accounting Officers and-or Ministers and follow-up to committee meetings. We received No. R2809 from Mr. Brendan Gleeson, who is the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. It is dated 20 September. It is correspondence to the committee providing a response to information we requested at the meeting on 11 July. It is proposed to note and publish that. Is that agreed? Agreed. I have flagged this, as did Deputy Murphy. I raised this issue with Mr. Sheahan, the deputy chief veterinary officer at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine at the meeting. He said, "If you were to ask me even three weeks ago what were standards like within the slaughter plant in Straffan I would say that standards were very good within this slaughter plant". Now the Department is saying, in point No. 1 of this correspondence, that investigations go as far back as 2021 and 2022. It repeats it on page 4. It says there was no cause for concern, even though there were ongoing investigations. A good few of us, including Deputy Murphy, raised the matter of the 20,000 horses that have gone missing with no trace. The Department says that unfortunately there is no data source against which this proposition can be checked, verified or validated. The whole thing seems to be wide open, for want of a better word. Deputy Murphy indicated that she wanted to say something on this too.