Tipperary farming leader says 'utter confusion' on new rules must be addressed immediately

The Deputy President of ICMSA, Eamon Carroll, said that there is “utter confusion” at farm level on the status of the new rules on TB and their schedule of introduction.

Mr Carroll noted that despite the "alarm bells" ringing loudly throughout 2025 on the surge in bTB, it was not until September 2025 that we saw the response plan launched and now, just over six months later, farmers were no wiser about what exactly is going to happen and when those changes will take place.

“The only thing that we know for certain at this stage is that the Department is intent on imposing very specific rules on farmers and very little on themselves or other actors in the cattle supply chain," he stated.

"We’ve been pointing this out repeatedly and we still think it must be addressed by the Minister. If we are to have clear targets on farmers, then we also need to have similarly clear verifiable targets and metrics on the Department themselves, on marts, on dealers and on feedlots. It cannot continue to be just a one-way system only applied to farmers,” said Mr Carroll, a well-known Templemore farmer.  

Observing that bTB is a massive issue at farm level with many families suffering from a farm management, financial and personal perspective, Mr Carroll said that the plan must have farmer buy-in if it is to succeed in slowing and then reversing the TB incidence.

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“That’s why we are becoming alarmed as we get reports from across the country that the new rules are being implemented in some places and not in others, along with different interpretations of the same rule depending on location. That’s just unacceptable and defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.  

"Nobody has been told definitively what these rules are or are going to be implemented.  If the Department is serious in relation to bringing farmers with them on TB, then it should immediately communicate with all farmers setting out in detail the new rules. Notably, how they will actually work and, critically, on what date the rules will be applied?”, said Mr Carroll.

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“Farmers were told in early 2025 that changes were coming in relation to bTB, a year later and farmers do not know where they stand on such a serious matter.  

"The Department needs to immediately clear this state of utter confusion by communicating directly with farmers, setting out the changes that are to be introduced, when those changes are being introduced  - and what changes the other actors in the cattle supply chain are going to see and how those changes will be measured,” concluded the ICMSA Deputy President.