Mr. Conor O'Mahony:

I thank the Cathaoirleach, Deputies and Senators for the invitation to appear today. We welcome to opportunity to discuss the TB eradication strategy. The Department is acutely aware of the financial and emotional stress associated with TB breakdown, which causes significant hardship to farmers and farming families. This Department is committed to the objectives of the TB eradication strategy and programme, which aims to reduce and ultimately eradicate this disease in Ireland. The importance of Ireland's TB eradication programme in underpinning farming family income should not be underestimated. As a country that exports 90% of its livestock produce, access to international trade markets is fundamental. It is a requirement of EU trade law to have an eradication programme. This enables Irish farmers to access the EU Single Market for our cattle, including calves, meat and milk. It is also a requirement for access to third country markets, where our exports have substantially grown in value and volume in the past ten years. It is noticeable that in several cases, TB is a significant consideration in the context of trade and certification requirements. A cost-benefit analysis report of the TB programme carried out by Grant Thornton in 2021 estimated that in economic terms, 78% of the benefits of the bovine TB eradication programme relate to private goods, while 22% accrues to public goods. This further emphasises the importance of the programme to our ability to trade internationally in dairy and beef products, which in 2022 amounted to €6.8 billion worth of dairy products as well as more than €3 billion worth of beef exports. That was in addition to the live export of more than 200,000 cattle and calves.

It is important to stress that in recent years we have been at an historically low level of TB prevalence, notwithstanding an increase in the past seven years. The focus of everyone engaged in dealing with TB is to reduce these levels even further and to move towards eradication of the disease. However, there are several challenges. TB is a challenging disease to control and eradicate due to several factors. The relative contribution of each of these factors varies from farm to farm. They are the movement of cattle with undetected infection, residual infection in cattle previously exposed to TB, inherent limitations of the tests, a reservoir of disease in a protected species - namely, the badger - and inadequate biosecurity practices. It is therefore important that farmers are empowered and supported to make the best choices for their own circumstances to protect their cattle from TB. It is critical that they are given practical advice based on scientific research about how they can reduce their TB risk and that they are given relevant, useful information about their own herds, their own cattle and neighbouring risks so that they can make any management changes, which may be necessary if they wish to avoid the costs and stress of a TB breakdown. This involves making informed decisions about the purchase of cattle and maintaining good overall herd health. The advice on how to reduce TB risk in a herd has remained generally consistent over many years and we continue to encourage farmers to act on it utilising a broader range of communication tools. Stakeholder endorsement of this advice, through the TB Forum, is hugely important in encouraging farmers to take active steps to reduce their TB risk. We are providing information and advice on the practical steps farmers can take to reduce the risk from badgers by a range of means including SMS texts, videos, leaflets and farmer meetings. By combining these practical farmer-led risk reduction actions with the policy of badger vaccination to prevent breakdowns and targeted licensed badger removal where necessary in response to spillover from badgers to cattle, we can greatly mitigate the risk of TB at the wildlife and cattle interface. Vaccinating badgers reduces the transmission of TB within the badger population and thereby reduces transmission to cattle. This protects cattle and reduces losses to farmers while safeguarding a native protected Irish wild species.

Previous EU audits and research related to the Irish TB programme have highlighted a lack of stakeholder involvement as a key impediment in achieving eradication. To help address this and in response to the developing disease situation, the Minister established the bovine TB stakeholders forum, in May 2018, in line with international best practice on the governance of animal health programmes. Its mandate is to develop evidence-informed policies that can eradicate TB while respecting the principles that were outlined in the national farmed animal health strategy. These include working in partnership, acknowledging roles and responsibilities, reflecting costs and benefits and prevention is better than cure. These considerations ultimately resulted in the TB eradication strategy 2021 to 2030, which was published in January 2021. The key actions of the strategy are preventing spread from herds with a high risk of recurrence, enhanced actions to clear infection from extended breakdown herds, addressing the risk from inconclusive animals, action plans for areas with increased localised TB levels, aligning with changes in the EU animal health law TB regulations. They further include reducing the risk posed by badgers, reducing the risk posed by deer in certain areas, tailored, simplified communications, clearer messaging of the risks of TB transmission and how to address these and biosecurity advice delivered to farmers with a focus on practical, clear and effective actions to reduce risk and incentivise risk-lowering behaviour.

I turn to the current disease situation. Almost 5,000 herds have suffered a TB breakdown in the past 12 months in comparison with fewer than 4,400 in the previous 12 months. Epidemiological data analysis suggests the reasons underpinning current levels of TB are the expansion of the dairy herd, the resulting increased levels of intensive cattle farming and the increased movement of cattle. We have also seen a substantial increase in the number of reactors with 27,800 being disclosed in the past 12 months in comparison with just below 23,000 in the previous 12 months - an increase of almost 5,000. In driving strategic change in the TB programme in Ireland the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, has consistently highlighted the critical role of stakeholder collaboration. Reflecting this, implementation of the TB strategy is being facilitated by a governance structure designed to ensure all perspectives are considered. The TB stakeholder forum is supported by three working groups – scientific, finance and implementation. Each group has an independent chair to deliver on their specific terms of reference. The working groups all report back to the forum.

Delivering the TB programme in any given year represents a massive logistical operation achieved through the co-operation of farmers, private vets and Department officials across the country. In 2022, more than 9.5 million individual animal TB tests were completed in more than 100,000 herds. The overall cost to the Exchequer of the TB programme, excluding staff costs, has increased from €52 million in 2021 to €57 million in 2022, and currently stands at €65 million to the end of November this year. In that time, the primary drivers of increased costs have been compensation payments to farmers and veterinary fees associated with additional testing. For many years, Ireland’s TB programme has been financially supported by the EU. However, EU support for the TB Programme has now ceased primarily because of funding pressures for other emerging diseases throughout the EU. Support was €9 million in 2018 and in 2023 we received €1.6 million in respect of 2022, the last year for which we will receive funding. This funding gap will have to be addressed by the remaining stakeholders and is a potent reminder of the need for collaboration and the urgency of action to decrease the disease levels.

The TB strategy sets out how the Department and stakeholders will continue to engage on the issues impacting on TB levels in Ireland, which will involve some difficult choices. By building our policies on a foundation of science and by providing practical science-based advice, which farmers can act on to reduce their risks, we can together focus our efforts to protect cattle from infection and farmers from the stress, uncertainty, and costs of a breakdown. To make further progress towards eradication, it will be necessary to take further steps that impact on the source factors, which maintain infection in herds. These will mean a need for greater controls on certain aspects of the programme, which will challenge stakeholders to engage with some difficult choices. If appropriate additional measures to reduce TB are not supported by stakeholders, this will likely have an adverse impact on future TB trends and the drive towards eradication. Most actions set out under the current TB strategy have either been implemented or are advancing well towards implementation. To make further substantial progress on TB in the 2023 to 2025 period, additional steps to build on the current strategy will be needed. Options were presented by the Department to the TB Forum and discussed with farming organisations for consideration at meetings over the past three years. The options presented included voluntary or mandatory informed purchasing, which would allow farmers better inform their management decisions in respect of their herd risk management when they are purchasing cattle, voluntary or mandatory risk-based trading, incentivised risk lowering behaviours and disincentivising risk elevating behaviours, reducing spread between areas using contract rearing risk mitigation and restrictions on movements from high to low TB areas. Other options included dynamic risk estimation at herd and animal level, supporting quality TB testing using gamma interferon blood testing and spatial tools to identify each group of cattle, reducing spread from high-risk herds by restricting older breeding cattle and confining TB exposed cattle to controlled finishing units and a regionalisation approach to eradication and control.

Based on these stakeholder discussions, the scope of what the farm organisations are prepared to accept as next steps became clear. While more progressive measures, such as informed purchasing, risk-based trading and increased restrictions on high-risk herds or animals, would be expected to lead to a sharper reduction in TB. However, these do not currently have stakeholder support.

We now have the building blocks in place to implement additional measures to the existing programme that can lower disease incidence and result in fewer farm families having to endure the challenges associated with a TB restriction. We are committed to constructive engagement with all stakeholders in helping the farming community. I sincerely hope that the next time we address the committee on bovine TB we will be able to outline a positive picture of reducing TB incidence and a trajectory towards eradication. I welcome questions from members to myself and my colleagues.