Mr. Liam Hanrahan:

I will cover off Deputy Carthy's points and Mr. Dillon will cover Deputy Kehoe's points. Deputy Carthy asked about badger vaccination and whether it is working. The only thing that will answer that question is definite research and scientific evidence. There is a requirement for increased funding for research, and an adequately funded programme will give us those answers because badger vaccination must be effective and justifiable. The north Kilkenny example where there was significant badger vaccination in recent years has been mentioned. There are large TB outbreaks and major breakdowns there at the moment, which we would prefer not to be the case. I spoke with one of our members recently who experienced a particularly TB bad breakdown. This member has had badgers tested from their farm, which happened to be positive with TB and which happened to be vaccinated previously as well. That is not a positive outcome. If a 100% vaccination programme could be implemented, it would be great but like our Covid vaccines, it does not always work.

There is a deer management forum in place and the objective would be to tackle the problem head on. We require sensible solutions to do this and controlling the deer population will be part of this. It is not only required from a TB perspective but from a public safety point of view as well and that should not be understated.

On eradicating TB totally from the country, we would back that concept 100%. From speaking with our members and from personal experience, there is no greater stress on farmers than a bad TB breakdown. One might say there are lots of risks and stresses on farms such as bad weather, shortage of feed and things like that but it is winter time and we are getting extremely bad weather but that is normal; we know the spring will come around. If a farmer has a bad TB breakdown, he or she does not know when it will finish and that is the hardest part about it. He or she does not know when it will end and that brings emotional and mental stress to the farmer, which should not be understated. We would back a properly funded eradication programme and we will work with that 100%.