There are six veterinary laboratories throughout the country. They are located in Sligo, Athlone, Kilkenny, Limerick, Cork and Backweston, where, incidentally, €260,000 has been spent on landscaping in the past four years. In 2015, the Sligo laboratory catered for 3,140 post mortems and 26,500 samples were presented for diagnostic testing.

Sixteen people are employed at the facility, which serves seven counties, including Donegal, Leitrim, Cavan, Roscommon and the Taoiseach's home county of Mayo. I understand that officials from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are meeting the 16 staff in question at the moment. If this facility were to close, it would be poor and very unfair because dead animals would have to be transported hundreds of miles across the country. Such a decision would fly in the face of the rural action plan that was launched on 23 January last. This is the only facility of its kind in the north west.

The Deputy could raise the matter as a parliamentary question or a Topical Issue.

This is not really a matter for legislation, unless the Deputy is talking about legislating for the regions.

A promise was made.

It relates to the programme for Government.

A number of farmers raised this point with me when I attended Deputy McLoughlin's meeting on the issue of Brexit. Deputy Scanlon's point about having to transport animals across the length and breadth of the country is a significant one. Deputies will recall that the Minister of the day, the late Joe Walsh, had to clamp down on all movements when we unfortunately had BSE here. People responded very strongly to that. The need to move carcasses across the country for analysis and investigation is an issue in itself. I hope that point will be made very clearly to the officials at the meeting mentioned by Deputy Scanlon. I will raise the matter again with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.