Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Kenny for raising those points. He spent a good part of the afternoon on the area of TB. It is taking up much of my time now as well. It is understandably a huge cause of concern for farmers. Let us be honest. We are seeing incidence now that we have not seen before. I do not remember any of my neighbours having 40 or 50 reactors in one herd when I was growing up at home, but that is a story we are hearing all too commonly now. It is a challenge for us. It cannot be business as usual. We have to change our approach.

The Deputy talked about suggestions from the forum. The forum reached its point. When I came into this role, I asked it to make submissions. I liaised back and forth with it and then in March, the chairman of the forum wrote to me stating he not feel he could bring it any further. At that point, I called a summit of all key stakeholders. As I said, we have had two very detailed days where I, with my officials, put forward the range of different measures we need in place that will address all three elements of transmission – the role of wildlife, the role of cattle-to-cattle transmission and the role of residual. If we do not cover all three areas, we will leave a gap for this disease to continue to seed out.

In addressing that, more testing is a key part. Increased staffing and investment in the area of wildlife is a key part of that. I am putting together a set of proposals that will be very ambitious to support our farmers, with the ultimate goal of making sure that the 94% of farmers that do not have it do not get it, and that the 6% of farmers that do have it have a roadmap and a clear light at the end of the tunnel as to how to get out of this.

In the short term, if the final set of proposals that I put forward and implement is successful, it will actually lead to an increase in reactors in the next year or two, and we need that to happen. That is a positive because currently there is skin testing and blood testing. Skin testing has only 80% efficacy. You layer in blood testing at a higher level. Blood testing is not perfect either because it has a higher positive incidence. However, you layer it in and you get over 90%. You then get into a space of having a very good statistical chance of leaving less of this behind. In that space, it means there will be a significant increase in the number of reactors but not necessarily an increase in the number of herds affected. We need to find out where it is in herds at present. That will be success. However, from a budgetary perspective and in the context of this conversation here, that will lead to front-loading of costs. The TB programme is a substantial financial burden on the Exchequer and farmers. It hurts everybody. There are many more things I could do with €100 million to support beef farmers than having to put it into this and to compensation. The overall TB programme reached €100.616 million. That is a massive level of expenditure, and I will need more money to implement the measures that I want to do. That is where I am being ambitious and working with key stakeholders to try to get consensus around a solution that, ultimately, can change the dial and support farmers in this situation.