Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Meaney for her comprehensive report. As she rightly said, this proposal is of critical importance to Ireland, which, except for Malta, is the only island member state of the European Union and, therefore, changes to the requirements for live exports would have a profound impact.

I will raise two points before I go to other committee members. One of the proposed changes is to the space required on a lorry. That will add greatly to the cost of transport. Calves being exported at the moment are achieving low prices and adding extra costs will make it uneconomical to transport them. While technically we will have access to the market, will it be economically viable to transport calves? That is a question that needs to be answered. If these kinds of space requirements are imposed, there is a strong argument that there should be compensation. Perhaps "compensation" is the wrong word but there should be an allowance per calf to meet the cost of the transport if we are serious about having a Single Market that is available to all member states. The changes to the space allocations on lorries would have a significant impact.

If I correctly heard what Dr. Meaney said, the tiers on lorries could be reduced from three to two, which would have a significant impact on the capacity of lorries. That would have a considerable economic impact on the cost of exporting calves.

I do not know how practical it is to feed milk replacer to calves during transport. They will all have come off different diets. Some will have been on whole milk on farms, etc. The impact on the stomachs of the calves could be significant. Would it not be more sensible to have a system where electrolytes rather than milk replacer would be fed on the journey? Dr. Meaney also talked about weight and age restrictions. Surely calves of that age with electrolytes for a certain amount of hours would arrive to their destinations in a healthy state. I am not sure that changing their diets in such a way, and then changing them again when they arrive at their destinations, would be in the interest of calf welfare. Putting my farmer hat on, I have grave concerns that would not work in practice. Those changes would have a severe impact.

I compliment our guests on their detailed analysis of the proposal and thank them for it.