A special confidential foot-and-mouth telephone line to enable those who have information on illegally imported animals will be in operation for the next two days at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.
Meanwhile, 30 days have elapsed since the discovery of the State's only confirmed case of the disease, at Proleek, Co Louth. The EU standing veterinary committee is expected to lift restrictions on most of the county later today.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, yesterday said it was obvious there were still remnants of some illegal activity in the Republic.
Mr Walsh told the daily press briefing that the confidential lines were being set up to augment the Garda confidential line and to supplement the information which was being given by the public on the Department's hotline.
He repeated his appeal to the public to come forward with information on any suspicious movements of people, vehicles or livestock. "A lot of follow-up trails and so on have been so effective and we continue to call on people to be helpful to us.
"We are seeking to ensure that some people who may have some reticence and who may have information, to let us have it. We have been following various leads with the gardai and our own special investigation unit," he said.
"These have led to the precautionary cull of over 5,000 animals, mainly sheep and as late as last week we found some unidentified calves in Tipperary, so obviously there is some remnants of some illegal activity. "However, we know and we are confident that this activity took place before February 21st [the day the first controls banning the import of animal and animal products was imposed on the Border]." The Minister said the new cases in the North were "a wake-up call" for the industry here but if controls were kept in place at farms and at the Border, the Republic could win the battle to keep the disease out. Mr Walsh said the expert committee which advised him on foot-and-mouth controls would be meeting later today and he would refer to it the matter of holding the St Patrick's Day celebrations in May. Mr Walsh has signed into law legislation which would ban anyone from Britain, Northern Ireland or the Netherlands who had been in contact with an infected farm or from a control zone from entering farms in the Republic.
He said the EU standing veterinary committee had decided an export ban would remain on the 10 km zone around the Pro leek farm for a further week and would be lifted if there were no more outbreaks in the jurisdiction. The Department had designated 31 official Border crossings through which the limited trade in agricultural products could be conducted.
The numbers of the confidential lines are 01607 2909 and 01607 2919. The Garda confidential line is 1800-666111.