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The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue T.D. has welcomed yesterday’s meeting of the bovine TB Stakeholders Forum, the first to be held following the publication of the new bovine TB Eradication Strategy last week.

In his opening remarks the Minister thanked Michael Cronin, Chair of the Forum and all the stakeholders for their combined efforts in bringing the new bovine TB Eradication Strategy to fruition.

Minister McConalogue went on to say that, “Implementation of the Strategy will be supported by the ongoing oversight of the Forum and supported by the three working groups – a scientific group, implementation group and finance group. Each working group has an important role to play to ensure all aspects of the Strategy are addressed. Extensive consultation with stakeholders will underpin success.”

He added, “The strategy sets out an ambitious work programme which will ultimately benefit Irish farmers. No farmer wants to endure a TB restriction and unfortunately we’re still seeing around 90 new farms a week being restricted. I want to see this number fall significantly over the coming years.”

“2020 saw the highest rates of TB in a decade and increased Programme expenditure related to that. There is massive emotional and fincncial burden to TB so we need to see it delivering results. I have consistently highlighted that trends in bovine TB are of significant concern to me and are damaging to Irish farmers. I committed to working with stakeholders on TB on taking Office which has culminated in the Strategy being published last week. That is only the first step in the journey. I now want to see a continued urgency in implementing the measures outlined in the Strategy and encourage the various working groups to meet as soon as possible to get this underway. We have to work together to drive down TB rates to ease the burden on both farmers and the State.”

Note to editors:

The bovine TB strategy, other details relating to the TB Forum and information relating the TB eradication programme can be found here www.bovinetb.ie