Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed has insisted his department is in the vanguard driving the move to establish a badger tuberculosis (TB) vaccination programme, following criticism of the slow pace of progress.

He said a vaccine trial in Kilkenny had been completed with results expected in 2017, while trials are also being conducted in six locations to vaccinate several hundred badgers to monitor them over three to four years.

This is expected to conclude in 2018 and the outcome “will eventually determine whether the vaccination of badgers delivers an outcome equivalent to the current badger removal strategy”.

Independents4Change TD Clare Daly claimed the department culled 6,000 badgers every year in a practice the Irish Wildlife Trust had described as “inhumane and barbaric”.

Ms Daly said the trust pointed to many instances of lactating females being culled while their cubs were left to starve underground.

Under threat

During agriculture questions in the Dáil, Ms Daly said it was quite shocking that they had been discussing a vaccination programme for badgers for the past 25 years and she said it was very concerning that, according to the Minister’s information, it would take a further two years before any progress was made.

She added that there was firm information to the effect that the badger population and its sustainability were under threat because of current practices.

The Dublin Fingal TD pointed to the UK experience where a “gold standard study” found that culling made no meaningful contribution to the control of bovine TB in Britain and that badger infection followed, rather than led, TB infections in cattle.

Mr Creed said, however, that Ms Daly was “blind-sided” to another element of the debate.

He pointed to the “extraordinary hardship that a TB outbreak brings to the farming community”.

The Minister said that often in relation to the cause “the finger is pointed conclusively at badger setts”.