During the period 1990 to 2000 a total of €652.4 million, excluding administration costs, was spent on my Department's bovine TB and brucellosis eradication schemes. It is not possible to break down the cost of each scheme due to the fact that the majority of TB tests and brucellosis tests are undertaken simultaneously.
The incidence of bovine TB is measured by the number of reactor animals per 1,000 tests. The average APT for the period was 3.2. Since 1999 the national incidence of bovine tuberculosis has been decreasing. This downward trend continued in 2001 and the provisional data available to my Department indicates that for 2001 the total number of reactors here will be less than 34,000 compared with a figure of 39,847 in 2000. The APT was reduced to 3.55 in 2001 from 3.9 in 2000.