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

The Deputy will be aware that last week we received our HPAI disease-free status again because we have gone three months without an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza. I pay tribute to our poultry farmers, to private veterinary practitioners, to my staff in the regional veterinary offices and my chief veterinary officer and her team in my Department because this has been a huge effort. At the start of the high-risk period in November last, it looked as though we would have a lot of instances. Everyone worked together. Obviously, I introduced the housing order and we had the mandatory biosecurity measures, but people really worked together in the sector and what could have been a very bad outbreak was controlled.
From the compensation perspective, last year €2.384 million was spend on compensation for avian influenza across five different sites. Compensation occurred in turkey flocks in Ireland in November. Ireland is still in a higher-risk period for further incursions of the HPAI, as winter is a higher-risk period for avian influenza, as the Deputy will be aware, due to the migration of wild birds and the extended survival of the virus in colder periods.

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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