Martin Heydon not looking for 'a pat on the back' on his TB plan
Agriculture minister Martin Heydon at the 2025 National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Co Offaly. Picture: Dan Linehan
The dust has settled on agriculture minister Martin Heydon’s recent ‘shake up’ with 30 new measures announced in the TB Action Plan.
With the launch of the new plan came pushback from the farming organisations who could not get on board with everything the Mr Heydon proposed, in particular, the lack of discussion surrounding removing the compensation ceilings for animals.
Speaking at the National Ploughing Championships, Mr Heydon said despite the farming organisations not being entirely happy with the final proposals, they had a major impact on improving on his original measures at the start of the year when he went back to the drawing board post TB summit in May.
Mr Heydon said although people may not agree 100% with his plan of action, no one is questioning the science backing up the measures.
“Nobody's really questioning the science here, and that's very important, because the science is irrefutable. We have three key contributors to the spread of TB. One is wildlife. One is cattle-to-cattle transmission, and the other is the residual transmission that has been left behind.
"So I'm taking a great opportunity to explain to farmers the rationale behind the plan, the ideas behind it,” he said.
A similar sentiment was echoed by deputy president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) Eamon Carroll, who said his organisation was not quite convinced the proposed measures were entirely the right ones, but they are backed by available data.
“We just want to be sure that the measures that we're putting in place are going to yield a result at the end of the day… I certainly don't want to be sitting around the table in three, four or five years and say: ‘You know, that's not working, let's load more rules on farmers.’
"What we [ICMSA] want are measures that are going to have an impact,” Mr Carroll said.
Mr Carroll warned farmers the new measures, such as Gamma Interferon (GIF) testing, will find more positive reactors before we see a turnaround in numbers.
Although the immediate effects of the action plan may sound bleak, Mr Carroll once again brought it back to the data.
“If you look at the three-year rolling average of herds that have conducted GIF testing, they're five times less likely to break down in a relapse,” he said
The ICMSA hope to see further funding to be put aside for the TB programme come October when the budget is finalised.
Mr Heydon explained at the ploughing that this year, with the current situation will cost the Government €130m, without the new measures in place.
When asked about the future budget and whether he would be asking for more, Mr Heydon said he was still in negotiations at this time, and once he got a final overall budget, he would be able to determine what can be set aside for TB.
“I have to manage that out and spend it on my key priorities in terms of the costs out of my budget for the current TB eradication program, which has grown exponentially in recent years with the increase in reactors.
"The key driver of that cost is compensation paid to farmers, which is really important, but doesn't do anything to stop the spread of the disease. We are in a position where, if it keeps growing exponentially, and we don't take the step change approach that I'm taking, it will continue to take up more of my budget and leave me with less money to spend on other areas.”
Irish Farmers Association chair of animal health TJ Maher, said the minister’s first port-of-call should be the compensation ceilings for animals.
“What needs to happen in the first instance is that that arbitrary ceiling has to be removed. There are going to be TB reactors valued every day of the week between now and a new plan being developed, and no matter how effective or efficient the new plan is, it is going to take decades to eradicate TB, so farmers are going to be losing animals in and out between.
"So from an IFA perspective, the first issue to be resolved is that the minister must show goodwill here now and remove the ceiling from the live valuation schemes, or at least significantly increase it to ensure that animals, commercial animals, beef animals, breeding animals, are able to be valued at their market value,” Mr Maher told the .
Mr Maher also brought up the unfair spending between farmers and the department when it comes to TB.
Mr Maher went on to say no one was discussing the labour costs, facilitating costs of TB and testing, which were recently quantified by the International Federation of Accountants, with a report published earlier this year.
“Nobody talked about the disruption to the farm when reactors are taken away. Nobody quantified the difference between the support payments this year and the actual income loss on farms… It's costing the state €100m, but we are the people who TB is costing the most of, and it's vital that for the next phase of this, the minister has meaningful engagement with farmers to progress his plans now to a programme that will be acceptable to farmers.”
Finally, Mr Maher stressed that the minister’s plan was not finalised and given the green light by farming organisations.
“What we’ve got from the minister is something that he launched without final discussions with the farm organisations. So we haven't signed off on any plan,” Mr Maher added.
