James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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695. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to provide comparative data between the number of cattle that fail the bovine TB skin test and the number of cattle subsequently confirmed to have TB lesions at slaughter; if he will review current testing methodologies for accuracy in light of these figures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37145/25]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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696. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the percentage of animals slaughtered with TB actually have TB; if he will review current testing methodologies for accuracy in light of these figures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37146/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 695 and 696 together.

Bovine TB is a challenging disease to control and eradicate. In recent years, bTB levels have continued to deteriorate, herd incidence has increased from 4.94% in 2023 to 6.04% in 2024. As of 29th June 2025, over a 12-month period we had a herd incidence of 6.40% with over 43,290 reactors. This disease is having an impact on our farmers and their families emotionally and financially throughout rural Ireland.

When cattle are slaughtered as reactors under the TB Eradication Programme, it is because they have tested positive for infection with TB. It is not routine to perform culture or other laboratory tests on all TB reactors, and such tests are generally less sensitive than the skin test and other ante-mortem tests.

Visual inspection of reactor carcases at post-mortem finds that, on average, over the last three years from 2024 to 2022 a range of 24-36% of such reactors had visible lesions of tuberculosis, meaning the infection has progressed to a stage where the disease process has caused such significant tissue damage that it can be seen with the naked eye.

The table below shows Total Reactors, Number Lesions and Lesion % rate over the last 3 years 2024 – 2022. Generally lower lesion rates indicate a higher proportion of new infections relative to older infections and earlier detection of positive animals overall.

If a reactor does not have visible disease lesions, it does not mean it is not infected; visual inspection cannot detect the presence of microscopic lesions and bacteria within the tissues of such animals. Most TB reactors have “no visible lesion” (NVL) when the routine postmortem examination is carried out by veterinary staff at slaughter plants.

The majority of such NVL animals are in fact infected with TB- they have just been detected sufficiently early that lesions have not become apparent to the naked eye.

My Department has produced leaflets and videos to explain how the tests work and what to expect from them and are available on www.bovinetb.ie/.

Table of TB Reactors and Lesions 2024 - 2022