Dr. June Fanning:

With regard to international comparison, the wildlife component is the difficult piece in relation to TB. It has been eradicated elsewhere in the world, such as Australia, for example, but they were able to deal with the wildlife host or species that was involved in a different way than we can with the badger. The badger is a protected species. While we cull badgers as part of the TB eradication programme, we recognise that it is not a sustainable solution long-term. That is why we have rolled this out after extensive research has shown that badger vaccination is no worse than culling from a disease control point of view. The wildlife piece does complicate the eradication but as the Secretary General said, we have the right tools now in the TB forum to address it with stakeholders from the farming bodies to private veterinary practitioners to meat processors and all the stakeholders involved across the chain. As the Deputy pointed out, it is a serious financial and emotional difficulty to anyone who is locked up with TB.

From our point of view, it is a multifactorial disease, and the spread happens in a number of different ways. A lot of stuff has been introduced through the forum and through our approach to it in the Department to tackle the individual outbreaks so that the source of infection is identified with an outbreak. While the outbreaks are hovering around the early 20,000 for reactor numbers, the herd incident for 2021 or 2022 had decreased slightly, which is good. We are seeing less herds go down but larger outbreaks within those herds. As I touched on earlier, that is with regard to dairy expansion, larger herds, fragmented herds or herds that buy in more animals. Part of the problem there is that they are at higher risk because of the number of movements. It is, therefore, a very complex disease but we are addressing it across a number of areas and with stakeholders, which will ultimately lead to eradication.