The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, yesterday welcomed the decision of EU scientists last week to give the all-clear to Northern Ireland beef exports from "certified herds".
Speaking to journalists while attending a meeting of EU agriculture ministers, he said he hoped the British would now bring forward proposals on a regional basis to allow the export ban in the North to be lifted.
Mr Walsh expressed confidence that if they were to do so the member-states would accept the advice of the scientists. But Commission sources said it remained unclear whether Britain intended to make a separate case for Northern Ireland first. Pressure from Scottish producers has prevented such a move.
A new proposal would have to go to the committee of chief veterinary officers and then to ministers.
The sources were predicting that the rest of the UK might not have access to world beef markets before late 1998.
The full computer tracing system is unlikely to be in place until mid1998, and younger animals eligible for export under an alternative scheme would not be old enough for slaughter before then.
Mr Walsh also welcomed the broad thrust of Commission proposals in Agenda 2000 to rationalise and make coherent the different parts of its rural development programmes. There were developments in technology which made it possible to locate computer-based industries in rural areas.
"We don't all have to live in a city," Mr Walsh said, citing the example of a firm in Killorglin, Co Kerry, which processes data for many cities in the US.
Presenting the report, the Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, insisted the challenge involved in saving rural communities was not one for agriculture alone.
Fifty per cent of farmers in the EU are now over 55 years of age, he said, and of these half had no successors.
It was inevitable then that farm numbers would decline, Mr Fischler said, while unemployment in rural areas was, at 12.5 per cent, already significantly above the EU average. New jobs would have to be found outside farming and through diversification.
Mr Fischler has been successful in getting support in the Commission for Agenda 2000's case to incorporate rural structural funding programmes under his aegis in the post-1999 budget. He hopes thus to ring-fence any expected savings in the agricultural guidance fund for the rural community.
Mr Fischler also hinted that in the less-developed regions the Commission would like to see income support payments to farmers.
