Some 4,424 badgers have been culled so far in 2025 and another and 1,795 have been vaccinated as part of the Department of Agriculture's current TB eradication strategy.

In comparison, the total figures for 2024 saw a total of 7,319 culled and 3,830 vaccinated.

In a parliamentary question on Wednesday, Labour TD Robert O'Donoghue asked Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon how many badgers tested positive for bovine TB.

In 2024, the Department said that it tested 1,946 badgers and 545 of those were positive for TB.

So far in 2025, the Department has received samples from 1,704 badgers. However, to date it only has results for 662 badgers. Of the 662 samples, 212 of those have tested positive, he said.

Minister Heydon said that carrying out a full post mortem on a single badger is a very costly exercise. Therefore, only a subset of the badgers removed are sent for a full post mortem.

High incidence areas

"The badgers removed are generally taken from high incidence areas for M Bovis. As a result, we are biasing the post mortem results in favour of finding positive M Bovis samples in badgers. So caution should be exercised when interpreting the results.

"Population control of badgers is a key component of the wildlife programme in the bovine TB programme in areas of high disease incidence and where the source of a TB outbreak is attributed to badgers. My Department's wildlife programme uses both vaccination and culling of badgers where appropriate," the Minister said.

The Minister added that he will continue to ensure that the wildlife programme throughout the country is supported into the future.

"However, it would be remiss of me to focus solely on one aspect of disease control. The wildlife programme must also run alongside good biosecurity controls, as well reducing the impact of known high-risk bovine animals and residual infection," he said.