Senator calls for review of compensation for Cooley farmers for 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak

Louth's Senator, Erin McGreehan, has called on the Government to consider a review of a compensation package for local farmers who had to cull their livestock as a result of the Foot and Mouth Disease in Louth in 2001.

Speaking in the Seanad, Senator McGreehan said she found the issue upsetting to speak about 22 years on and spoke of the unimaginable upset and trauma it caused for affected farmers on the Cooley Peninsula.

Senator McGreehan said, "farmers knew the cull had to happen. There was great cooperation given by farmers in the Cooley Peninsula at the time of the cull. There was a compensation package, but from very early on the Department will be very aware that the farmers affected were not satisfied with valuation.''

The Cooley senator explained that some farmers decided to take a legal challenge against the Department of Agriculture and financial packages have "been rightly paid out to those farmers". The local Fianna Fáil senator spoke of a "most unsatisfactory two-tier compensation package, one for the farmers who took a legal challenge and another for those who didn't".

"The crux of the matter here is that each farming family made the same sacrifice, same losses, same trauma and they all cooperated with the cull. But some are now being treated differently.''

Senator McGreehan concluded by saying that those who lost everything, a way of life, livestock that took years, generations of hard work to create, must be adequately compensated for the losses they suffered.