THREE new cases of BSE were confirmed yesterday by the Department of Agriculture bringing to 50 the number of cases so far this year, more than three times last year's total.
The new cases were found in counties Donegal, Kilkenny and Cork and these cases bring the total in the Republic to 165, since the disease was identified in 1989.
The dramatic increase in cases this year has prompted the Department of Agriculture to conduct thorough investigations into why the incidence of the BSE in the Republic should be rising when cases are declining in the UK where it first occurred.
Earlier this year, the deputy chief veterinary officer in Britain, Mr Kevin Taylor, said that the Republic could expect an increase in Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy because of the slaughter policy being implemented.
He said that slaughtering all the animals in a herd where the disease is identified is a good PR exercise but it was not getting to the root of the problem.
He said the Irish authorities should have sought out what he termed "cohort" animals, animals born and raised with the diseased animals and fed the same food, since contaminated animal food is thought to be the cause of the disease.
In Britain, only the diseased animal is slaughtered but a great deal of effort goes into tracking down these cohort animals and slaughtering them.
They have had nearly 180,000 cases of the disease.
As a result, the British authorities claim that they will have eradicated BSE early in the next century and already they can point to a dramatic decline in new cases.
In March, the Department of Agriculture, which has already slaughtered 22,334 animals at a cost of nearly £16 million from 155 herds, began to follow British advice and track down cohort animals while continuing the slaughter all policy.
However, it has proved much more difficult to do that here because of the number of times Irish cattle are moved during their lifetime as Ireland has the highest animal movement rate in Europe and there is no computerised passport system.
Based on Mr Taylor's predictions, the success rate in getting rid of the disease is directly related to the finding of cohort animals and taking them out of herds, so Irish cases may continue to rise.
Ireland's infection rate is low - 165 cases in seven years from a herd of seven million animals. The new cases have come at a sensitive time for the industry which is already experiencing a partial ban on three counties by Russian beef buyers.
The only positive element in the three new cases are that they were found in older cattle in dairy herds.
The youngest cow involved, in Kilkenny, was six years old, the Donegal one seven and the Cork cow, 11.
This means that one of the other reasons for the increase, continued feeding of meat and bonemeal despite a 1990 ban, does not arise as it would if the animals were younger.
They do, however, raise the Cork total cases since 1989 to 42, push Donegal into second place on the case league and give Kilkenny its second case.
The Russians have said they will not review their policy on the ban on beef from Cork, Tipperary and Monaghan until January.