Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 4 May 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Appropriation Accounts 2021
Vote 30 - Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine - 2021 Financial Statements
Fishery Harbour Centres

9:30 am

Dr. June Fanning:

The balance currently, if we take 2022, for example, is that just over 12,000 badgers were involved in the wildlife programme. Just over 7,000 of them would have been vaccinated and 5,000 would have been culled. That is a serious shift from what we would have had at the start in 2019 when we rolled out vaccination. It would have been less than 2,000 and we still would have been dealing with similar numbers of badgers. It is something we are phasing out.