Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue has instructed his team to put together a successor to the Irish Deer Management Forum, which will coordinate with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
The forum has been inactive since 2018, and its revival is related to concerns over the spread of bovine TB.
The Irish Farmers’ Association recently told a meeting of the Oireachtas joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine that the main driver to achieving TB eradication “will not be the one-dimensional approach of controls on farms or on farmers in how they go about their daily business. While a multifaceted approach will be necessary, the main driver has been and will always be the effective implementation of the wildlife control programme,” IFA animal health chairman TJ Maher said.
Mr McConalogue has committed additional resources to the programme in the recent budget. However, the IFA has warned that the “main limiting factor” is the human resources available to “effectively and efficiently implement the programme to positively impact on the levels of TB.”
The IFA has called for the establishment of the new deer management forum to happen “as a matter of urgency”. This being to address the TB risk associated with deer “which is becoming more prevalent”, as well as the broader impact deer are having “roaming through our farmland, eating grass, damaging crops and fences”.
But according to Damien Hannigan of the Irish Deer Commission, “In 2018, DAFM chief veterinary officer Eoin Ryan stated there was ‘no evidence of a link between wild deer and spread of TB’, and in 2021 it was confirmed nationally just three wild deer tested positive for bovine TB in 2020.”
LSL News.