Agriculture Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

I absolutely empathise and understand. I remember when we had a reactor at home in the 1990s. I was still at school at the time. The devastation and the impact of having a restricted herd and of the cow going off to the factory was devastating. Financially, it had a significant impact, but emotionally, even beyond that, it created huge turmoil.
I would very much like to be able to not have any caps on ceilings here but I have to manage a budget within the constraints and balance the interventions and the allocation of that money to make sure that ultimately it is driven to reducing the overall incidence of this happening and having fewer farmers having to deal with this awful impact on them, their families and their farms into the future. That is what my new TB programme does. I will monitor this situation. As we say, we do not have a crystal ball as to what the price of beef will be over the course of this year. We do not want to see it drop. Farmers are getting an income now that they need to get and that is very important. In terms of managing my budget, the TB programme in 2025 alone cost €121 million.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29