'A shambles from start to finish and a damning indictment of DAERA' - UUP's Diana Armstrong
Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader and Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Diana Armstrong has said the Blake review exposes ‘a catalogue of contradictions and communication failures within DAERA’.
Speaking after the Blake review was published, Ms Armstrong said: “Dr Blake has done a serious piece of work and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
"But read it. This was a shambles from start to finish and it is a damning indictment of how that Department operates.
"The whole case for culling those animals in the fields rests on them being too wild to gather.”
She added that “on the very morning of the operation fifteen of them were standing in a shed waiting on paperwork”.
"The keeper had gathered them weeks before for TB testing,” she added.
"Buyers had walked among them without causing alarm.
"Animals were moved off that farm on the day itself”.
Ms Armstrong adds that “Dr Blake sets every bit of that out in his report and still concludes they could not be gathered”.
"Nobody has answered that, and it is the question the whole thing turns on,” she added.
“Three animals were shot at Site 1 after the order to stop had already been given, and Dr Blake could not establish why.
"Site 2 was declared clear at lunchtime and, in his words, no search was carried out on Site 2.
"Sites 1 and 3 were searched extensively over two days. Site 2 was not searched once.
"Five days later a calf was found on a public road with a wound he describes as reflective of a gunshot, and he concludes it most likely came from Site 2
“With a bull loose on a public road and firearms in use, staff rang the PSNI at quarter past seven and again at half past and got no answer.
"Dr Blake points out that neither agreement between DAERA and the police even allows for that possibility. But here is the bit that will stay with people.
"Two neighbours, distressed at what they were watching, tried to move the cow and calves onto their own ground because they wanted to buy them and save them.
"That was refused. The animals were driven back into the field and two of them were shot".
The AERA chairperson added: “I visited a neighbouring farm last night. Three animals from that herd are alive there today, including the wounded calf, and nobody from the review ever contacted those people.
"They have had those animals since July and were never asked a single question about them. I will be putting these points to the Minister this afternoon.”