Ireland

Ireland put under plague siege

Special report: Foot and mouth disease

Henry McDonald, Kamal Ahmed and Sarah Ryle
The Observer, Sunday March 4 2001

Ireland's vital multi-billion pound farming industry breathed a collective sigh of relief last night after initial tests on a suspected foot and mouth outbreak in Co Louth proved negative.

But this weekend the Irish Republic still resembled an enclosed medieval city fighting to keep out the plague, with border crossing points closed, the movement of people and animals in the countryside banned, masses at Catholic churches cancelled and even rural schools threatened with closure.

Meanwhile it emerged that there is to be a crackdown on the way Britain's biggest supermarkets use their power to manipulate the food industry. This follows Tony Blair's comment that they had an 'armlock' on farmers.

A legally enforceable code of conduct being drawn up by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Fair Trading will demand that supermarkets have a fairer relationship with farmers, who complain they are bullied into providing food at very cheap prices by the large chains.

Despite the good news from Co Louth, Ireland is not lowering its guard. It will take another 24 hours for veterinary scientists analysing tissue samples taken from animals at the farm close to the Northern Ireland border fully to verify a negative result.

However, the Irish Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh said he was cautiously optimistic that the state would escape an outbreak of the disease. which would threaten an industry worth IR£11 billion. One economic forecaster, Jim Power of Friends First Asset Management, estimated that the crisis could knock 1.5 per cent off the Republic's national growth rate.

There was however a further boost for Ireland's struggle to protect vital agriculture export markets when the United States Department of Agriculture lifted its threat to ban Irish imports into North America. France, though, has banned imports of live stock from Ireland .

Ireland only consumes 15 per cent of its agricultural produce; the remaining 85 per cent is exported to 100 countries around the world.

A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture in Dublin said the results of preliminary tests on a suspected foot and mouth outbreak have proved negative. The animals were on a farm in the exclusion zone, close to another farm in Northern Ireland where there had been a confirmed outbreak of the disease.

The RUC is currently investigating allegations that the infected animals were brought to Ireland from England by South Armagh-based smugglers.

In a desperate bid to seal the border, the Irish government called for more police officers to patrol on the northern side of the border. Michael Smith, the Republic's Defence Minister, appealed to the RUC to deploy officers on the South Armagh end of the frontier. But the RUC is thin on the ground in the region because of the ever-present threat of attack from dissident republican paramilitaries. Even heavily armed British troops only travel through the area via helicopter avoiding roads that might be booby-trapped or mined.

Smith has already dispatched 4,000 Irish troops to the border in a move to shut down one of the most porous frontiers in the world, which is littered with hundreds of unapproved roads and crossing points.

Many sectors of Irish economic and social life have simply shut down as the Republic closes the drawbridge in a bid to keep foot and mouth out.

For the first time since the anti-Catholic penal laws of the seventeenth century, Catholic masses have been called off across the country. Thirteen churches in the Louth-South Armagh border zone have been asked not to celebrate Sunday mass.

In a letter to priests, the leader of Ireland's four million Catholics, Archbishop Sean Brady said that where it was considered necessary to cancel services, parishioners were excused from Sunday mass and should not travel to neighbouring parishes.

The Licensed Vintners Association, which represents Ireland's publicans, has told members to provide disinfectant for rural pubs. In Co Longford a district court judge urged local nightclubs to close for a week.

Air travel between Ireland and Britain has also effectively shut down with Aer Lingus and British Airways cancelling many flights.

Although Irish trainers and horses will not be travelling to this week's Cheltenham festival there was some good news for punters. Irish bookmakers will refund all bets on Cheltenham races. A spokesman said the gesture could cost the industry hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Sporting fixtures have been heavily affected with no soccer, Gaelic games, horse racing, hockey and even Ireland's Six Nations rugby clash with Wales called off.

St Patrick's Day parades north and south have also been cancelled including a four-day festival in Dublin.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland's Agriculture Minister Brid Rogers announced yesterday that further tests on farms in the Province showed there were no further suspected cases of foot and mouth.

She said that other than one confirmed case there are no other cases, which would have forced her officials to send samples to be tested. About 1,000 pigs have already been slaughtered as a precautionary measure on a South Armagh farm.

Like the Republic, rural life in Northern Ireland has ground to a halt as a result of restrictions on the movements or animals and people. All sporting fixtures including soccer matches in Belfast city, which is unaffected by the disease, were called off yesterday.

But the Province's deputy first minister Seamus Mallon criticised the Belfast Giants - the North's new ice hockey side - for going ahead this weekend with home games against Nottingham and Cardiff.

Hundreds of Welsh ice hockey fans have come to Belfast even though the rugby international was cancelled to prevent Irish supporters from travelling to Cardiff.

'I say to the Giants it is not in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland,' Mallon said.

In Britain supermarkets - including Asda, Safeway, Tesco and Sainsbury's - will face heavy fines if they fail to stick to the new rules.

The Government revealed yesterday that seven more cases of foot and mouth had been found - from Cornwall to Dumfries and Galloway - bringing the total number of cases to 51.

The chief veterinary officer, Jim Scudamore, said 45,000 cattle had now been slaughtered. Scudamore admitted that there were at least three more highly suspect cases . He could not say how long the crisis would last.