The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) said that surveillance for bluetongue in Ireland has in place since 2016.

An outbreak of BTV-3 was confirmed in a cattle herd in Co. Wexford on January 23.

It was detected through the culled cow routine surveillance carried out by DAFM in a slaughterhouse.

This marked the first occurrence of bluetongue infection in a homebred animal in Ireland.

Since then, the virus had been identified in three more herds in Co. Wexford.

Across the four herds, a total of 11 animals have found to be infected with the disease to date.

The department believes the likely source for the initial cases in Wexford was a midge infected with bluetongue virus being blown across the Irish Sea last autumn.

DAFM has said that investigations are ongoing and additional surveillance is being carried out in the area.

Bluetongue

Until bluetongue was detected in Northern Ireland last year and more recently in Wexford, the department's surveillance primarily served the purposes of early detection of any incursion of the disease.

For the past year, all DAFM Regional Veterinary Labs (RVLs) have been sampling carcasses that met a case definition that suggested a need to rule out bluetongue.

In the case of Kilkenny RVL, given its location in the south-east of the country, this was extended to all carcasses submitted.

All of these tests have been negative, the department confirmed.

The criteria for selecting animals for testing in the RVLs were risk-based, as follows:

Herd level outbreaks of milk drop in dairy cattle;
Deformed bovine/ovine foetuses;
Carcasses showing evidence of specific pathology (vasculitis);
Carcasses submitted from the south-east of Ireland (Kilkenny RVL catchment area).

The general virology division at the department's Backweston campus has been undertaking bluetongue testing of samples from a number of different sources.

These include post-import testing, active surveillance conducted by Regional Veterinary Organisations, AI station surveillance, and RVL samples.

Last year, there were 6,164 tests carried out for bluetongue at Backweston. Up to February 4 this year, there have been 1,415 tests carried out.

The blood testing laboratory (BTL) in Co. Cork performs bluetongue testing for antibodies on samples from the Cull Cow Monitoring Scheme.

This was the channel through which Ireland's first case of bluetongue virus (BTV) was detected.

1,845 BTV tests from the Cull Cow Monitoring Scheme samples were carried out at the facility in 2024.

So far, 1,463 samples submitted since September 2025 have been tested under the scheme, with one positive case confirmed.

Since the cases were reported in Northern Ireland, DAFM said the the Cork laboratory has increased the intensity of its surveillance, and currently all samples are tested in real time as they are received.