Dr. Damien Barrett:

I will take the question on vaccination. Deputy Fitzmaurice asked how much vaccination is going on. I will also mention culling. This year to date we have captured more than 8,000 badgers for vaccination. This is an increase from approximately 1,900 in 2019. Since 2019, apart from 2020 when there was a reduction because of Covid, we have been culling between 5,000 and 6,000 badgers in high instance areas. If there is a high risk breakdown in a particular region, badgers are culled and vaccination goes on in parallel.

Deputy Fitzmaurice made a point about manpower. We have our own technical agricultural officers who supervise subcontractors from the farm relief service who do the work. The number of people being supervised by a technical agricultural officer has increased from two to three. There is an increase in the manpower. The committee may be aware that there have been issues with technical agricultural officer vacancies. Much good work has been done this year in addressing these vacancies. It is not completely fixed yet but things are a lot better than they were this time last year.

It is worth pointing out that no matter how many people the Department of agriculture puts on the ground it is probably an impossible task to fully identify all badger setts. We rely on the farming community to tell us about the location of setts. Next year we hope all identified setts will be on the basic income support scheme maps when they are issued next year so that if people are not aware of setts on their land they will become aware of them. We want to know where they are.

In spite of all this, and we will never have all of the manpower we need, we are asking farmers to fence off setts. It is not about keeping badgers in setts; it is about preventing close contact. The area immediately outside a sett where the badgers are defecating and urinating is high-risk material. If we could stop cattle from grazing that grass that is contaminated, it would go a long way. We are also asking farmers to badger-proof their farmyards. Feeds such as maize and beet are particularly palatable to badgers. They are particularly fond of it. People have to have these feeds but we ask that they could at least keep them in a way that the badgers cannot access them.

I ask the Deputy to clarify his question on TB resistance.