Gorman: Minister must review TB valuations as 'gesture of goodwill'
The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president Francie Gorman has called for the valuation ceilings under the bovine tuberculosis (TB) programme to be reviewed.
Under Budget 2026, an additional €85 million was provided to address rising bovine TB levels across the country.
However, Francie Gorman said that clarity is needed on how that money is going to be delivered.
Valuations
Speaking at an IFA meeting in Kerry this week, Gorman said "the first step that has to be done is the ceilings in the valuation have to be addressed".
"I spoke to a farmer in Clare that had 26 reactors out of a herd of about 120 cattle and he is losing almost €14,000 on the value of those stock.
"An individual farmer having to take that hit is completely unacceptable," he said.
The IFA president said as a "gesture of goodwill" Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon "needs to address that issue immediately if he wants to bring the goodwill of farmers on this journey to try and reduce TB levels".
"If we don't have farmer buy in on that, we're going nowhere," he said.
"I spoke to the minister after the budget, to be honest he wasn't in the mood for changing the valuation ceiling, but it has to be changed," he added.
The IFA president said that some of the proposals in the TB Action Plan are "still unpalatable".
"We've got to see a reduction in TB numbers and we've got to see measures implemented that are going to do that.
"Next year, we'll spend €157 million on TB, an extra €87 million allocated in this budget, which is what we wanted because if we didn't have that allocation there is a fair chance farmers wouldn't be fully compensated for the stock.
"At the moment the €3,000 valuation has been breached in a number of cases and farmers are being penally affected by that.
"That's an issue that the minister has to address if he is going to bring farmers with him in this journey to try and see can we get a handle on the problem.
"It's a huge problem and whatever measures are taken, I think we've got to see a reduction in it at the end of this two or three year period. If we don't, we're in a different scenario completely," Gorman told Agriland.
Bovine TB
In recent years, there has been a significant increase in bovine TB levels in Ireland.
Over 41,600 reactors were disclosed in 2024, which was a 44% increase when compared to 2023.
This was on top of an increase of 24% in 2023 from over 23,000 reactors in 2022.
Last year, over 6,000 farm families were affected by a bovine TB outbreak.
Herd incidence has increased from 4.31% in 2022 to 6.04% in 2024, which is a 36% increase in the number of herds restricted between 2022 and 2024.
The total costs of running the bovine TB programme to the exchequer in direct costs in 2024 was over €100 million.
In addition to this, farmers contributed €8 million in disease levies as well as paying for their annual TB test.
