Following the announcement of the bovine tuberculosis (TB) action plan by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon in September 2025, changes are set to kick in this coming April.

Over 400 attendees tuned in a webinar to hear from Teagasc dairy specialist, James Dunne; Teagasc head of dairy knowledge transfer, Dr. Joe Patton; and Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) head of ruminant animal health division, Damien Barrett.

Dunne said TB continues to be a major challenge for the sector, and with 5,701 farms currently restricted, Dunne said it is "clear that change is needed".

Barrett told the attendees that TB cases are still "way too high" as herd incidence remains at 5.68%, saying farmers who fail the test "would want to start realising they have TB, and stop arguing with it, or challenging it and trying to get out of it."

Patton said that farmers should stop thinking of what the implications are and start thinking of it as what it is, a contagious infectious disease.

Barrett explained that the infectious rate in animals is far higher in Ireland than it is in the likes of New Zealand which is why Ireland still struggles with eradication, but admitted that a vaccination would be the "holy grail" in eventually eradicating the disease.

Barrett said: "It would be a game changer, but as it currently stands, we can't differentiate between vaccinated and infected cattle, we need the test that can differentiate that.

He also said a big problem with eradication is residual infections, stating background levels of TB in the population have been increasing by 13-14% year-on-year since the abolishment of dairy quotas in 2015.

He said the reason for the residual infections is the skin test only has an 80% sensitivity, meaning only eight out 10 infected animals are picked out.

However, it has a specificity of 99.5% which means only one in 5,000 tests are false positives, which is important when testing seven million cattle per annum.

When speaking about the action plan, Barrett said: "What we're trying to set about in this plan is to empower people to make decisions to take back control and not be controlled by this disease.

"We're not declaring victory and we won't be declaring victory any time soon because we're not in a position to, but at this point in time, we've stopped it going up.

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