The killing of Irish badgers to reduce the level of bovine TB in cattle is to continue, despite a major British scientific report that said culling is not an effective way to curb the disease in cattle.
The final report of the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on cattle TB in Britain, which took 10 years to compile, concluded that TB control efforts should focus on measures other than badger culling, given its high costs and low benefits.
A randomised badger culling trial in 30 areas of England found that culling led to a 23 per cent drop in the incidence of bovine TB inside the culled area.
However, it also found that culling disrupted the social organisation of badger sets, causing infections to become more widely dispersed: proactive culling led to a 25 per cent increase in cattle TB on neighbouring unculled land.
The ISG concluded that rigidly applied control measures targeted at cattle could, instead, reverse the rising incidence of disease, and halt its geographical spread.
At the weekend a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said the Irish "four areas trial", which has involved killing over 2,000 badgers in blackspot areas of high bovine TB infection, would continue.
"We cannot, and indeed the British scientists did not, draw comparisons between the two exercises here and in England because they are totally different," said the department spokesman.
He said when blackspot areas are identified, badgers are removed under licence and there has already been a significant improvement in the number of reactor cattle being found.
"In addition, we are working on providing a vaccine for badgers - something that is not being done in Britain," he said.
Animal welfare and rights groups both here and in Britain have attacked the Irish scheme and the UK Badger Trust claimed that 6,000 snares to kill badgers were being set across Ireland on a nightly basis.
The latest figures available for the number of badgers being culled in the Irish trial zones in Cork, Kilkenny, Donegal and Monaghan showed that 806 animals were culled in Cork, 552 in Kilkenny, 208 in Donegal and 660 in Monaghan.
However, the removal of badgers is not confined to these areas and culls take place in any part of the country where there are high levels of bovine TB.
Although the incidence of bovine TB increased slightly in 2005, the level of the disease in cattle has been falling.
Using the number of cattle that react to the bovine TB test as a guide, this shows there were 45,000 in the years 1998 and 1999 but this fell to 23,000 in 2004 and increased to 25,800 in 2005. The number of reactors last year was back down to 24,000.
This, according to the Department of Agriculture, was a 6.6 per cent decrease on the figures for the previous year.
Last year, 118,925 of the 122,392 cattle herds were tested within a 12-month period and a total of 6.2 million animals had at least one test during the year.