Mr. Eoin Ryan:

I will proceed with some of these issues and then hand over to my colleagues for some of the other points. On Deputy Ring's question about the NPWS, I will not express an opinion on what Department it should be in but I can say that we have good co-operation. The NPWS licenses our badger activities. It is the branch of the State with responsibility for protecting wildlife and all of our activities must comply with the EU wildlife convention as it pertains to the Burren. Of course, badgers are a native Irish species and nobody wants to eradicate the badger population. We report to the NPWS, which licenses us. We provide the service with a lot of information. That is the relationship. The NPWS is the regulator and we comply with the licence conditions and provide details to it. This is one of the things that has enabled us to vaccinate badgers sustainably and prevent cattle from getting TB and, unfortunately, where necessary to cull badgers in response to an outbreak.

The Deputy made a great point on the vaccination for TB, which comes up all of the time. There is, of course, a vaccine for TB that we all got when we were kids, the BCG vaccine, which has been used since the early 1920s. This is the vaccine that is used in badgers. Just like its use on people, it is not a perfect vaccine in badgers, but it is good enough. It provides sufficient protection to prevent the spread through the badger population just as it does with people. The reason it is not used in cattle is because if we vaccinate bovines with BCG they may test positive to the skin test. One then has the problem of not knowing if they were positive due to vaccination or because they became infected. If the vaccine is not perfect, unfortunately a proportion of vaccinated cattle could still get infected. There is good news on that front. Our colleagues in the UK are putting a significant amount of funding into researching this and we are co-operating with them on it. They have developed a possible way of differentiating between vaccinated and infected cattle. We have co-operated on them with this. A scientific paper was published recently that was co-authored with UK colleagues and Department officials. If these things work out, in five to ten years it may be possible to vaccinate high-risk cattle and to differentiate those from infected cattle. We are working closely with UK colleagues and supporting them on that.

On the question about EU animal health regulations and the Irish position, the EU animal health law covers a whole range of diseases. Like all of these things, there are 26 member states trying to discuss it with us. There is the Commission's opinion, there are the MEPs' opinions and it is difficult to get everything we want. I believe we negotiated very hard. We spent a lot of time over there and our representation in Brussels also does a great job, as members will be aware. It is true that we did not get everything we wanted. It is also true that the research we carried out in the mid-2000s showed that while across the board pre-movement testing does not deliver that much, targeted pre-movement testing at high-risk herds would deliver something. One of the difficulties is that all the other countries with TB carry out pre-movement or post-movement testing as standard.

It is the norm. The Scots, French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish do it and we argue that in an Irish context we prefer risk-based testing and to look at herds or animals that are higher risk. All these things come out as a compromise and representations are made by a range of political representatives on this.

On dairy, doubts were expressed about the role of the sector where there was TB. We had just over 4,700 herds restricted in 2020, of which 1,491 were dairy. The number of dairy herds restricted is disproportionate and 55% of all reactors last year were in dairy herds. We have to base what we do on evidence and science and we have to be blunt and say let us address and tackle the risk. That is one of the things we are doing.

Deputy Browne commented that the measures are not applied to deer or badgers. Measures certainly are applied to badgers. We have put a huge effort into the wildlife programme for the past 20 years and continue to put additional resources into it. It is having an effect. We are culling badgers where necessary and vaccinating badgers to prevent outbreaks. That is part of the programme for Government and most sectors welcome the sustainable benefit we can deliver protecting farmers and cattle while also protecting badger populations.

The point about Coillte was well-made. Coillte is a member of the TB forum for the reasons Deputy Browne outlined. The farm organisations suggested Coillte be invited to take part in the forum. Coillte joined, is a member and attends the forum. It co-operates with the Department and University College Dublin on research into the ecological-epidemiological issues around where forestry is.

Deputy Cahill commented about the earlier question on the tests. These are specific questions that we have videos, leaflets and all sorts on. They are frequently asked questions. I will circulate those to the committee. The figure can be higher or lower but the skin test, on average, will pull out eight out of ten infected cattle. The two that are missed cause the problem. There are false positives with every test but they are not our problem; false negatives are our problem. We are all more aware of this with Covid. This is in our eradication programme. False positives are unfortunate but false negatives are really the issue. False negatives in the skin test are approximately one in 5,000. That is not zero but it is pretty low. People say they had a reactor and ask if it could have been a false positive. Of course it could, but the chance is one in 5,000. There are 4,999 chances that it is not a false positive. It is like the chance of winning the lotto in the GAA club on a Saturday night. Somebody wins but it is probably not you.

The gamma test is more sensitive and detects infection earlier, which is why we use it in infected populations, such as in the case of the constituent Deputy Cahill mentioned with the unfortunate breakdown. When we know TB is present, we need to find the infected cattle and get them out of there earlier so they cannot spread infection. If it is spread by badgers, we need to address that and other issues. We use the gamma test for that but the Deputy is right that the specificity of the gamma interferon blood test is lower, at 97%. On average, approximately three out of 100 gamma interferon positives are not infected. Given that we use it in infected cattle, that is not the biggest problem. The problem is the infected cattle we miss, not the uninfected cattle which rarely get taken out. I sympathise with and understand the Deputy's constituent's concerns and it is something I hear regularly. I agree we have a big job of communication to do there. If we were doing our communications job the way we want to do it, the big concern for farmers would be, when the reactors have been taken out, what the chances are that there are other infected cattle in the herd that did not react to the test and will cause more trouble. It is our job to communicate that better and we are trying to do more on that with leaflets, videos and so on, as well as talking to people and doing public and local meetings to explain this. The gamma test takes out infected cattle who are not yet long enough in the infection process to respond to the skin test. If someone loses ten cattle to the blood test, one may be a false positive but the other nine will spread infection if they are left. We are about removing infected cattle, getting the herd back trading, derestricting the farmer and getting him or her back in business in a safe way without spreading the disease to neighbours or trading partners.

I hope that answers the questions and I will include that other information in the information we circulate on deer. I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Forde, for some of the financial questions, if that is okay.