Animal Diseases
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14
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Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

The difficulty is with identifying whether a vaccinated animal tests positive; animals that test positive and vaccinated animals cannot be differentiated. Some research has been done and we have collaborated with research projects on vaccination in the UK and beyond. Vaccination masks the presence of the disease and we need to find it to eradicate it. All of my measures are about identifying it and seeding it out. When I speak about the focus on breeding stock, it is because 6%, give or take, of our herds in the country have it. A lot of these young maiden heifers were sold to low-risk farms, so unbeknownst to those farmers they had brought in a high-risk animal, which was then seeding the disease. We need to identify these animals earlier in the initial herd and get them removed so they do not spread the disease. This is happening because we do not have one test that is 100% foolproof. The annual herd skin test that farmers are familiar with only has 80% efficacy.
One out of every five that goes through that tests negative but is positive, and that has been a key contributor to the disease. When we layer on the blood testing it increases our efficacy to over 90% but we do not have something that is 100%.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-14