It is assumed that the Deputy is referring to the recent study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The study, which concentrated mostly on the situation in the United Kingdom, indicates that, in the UK, badgers are implicated in transmitting Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis (TB), to cattle. This finding is line with research undertaken concerning bovine TB in Ireland. However, the study also includes an observation that badger culling has the capacity to both increase and decrease the level of T.B. incidence in different areas and that repeated badger culling in the same area is associated with increasing prevalence of M. bovis infection in badgers. These observations do not concur with my Department's experience in dealing with bovine TB and published research studies such as the East Offaly Project and the Four Areas Study have demonstrated that, as badger cull was repeated, the prevalence of infection in badgers and cattle decreased.
Notwithstanding the findings of this research undertaken in Ireland, my Department, in association with CVERA (the Centre for Veterinary Epidemiology and Risk Analysis) is currently undertaking a critical review of the work on which the conclusions of the UK study were based. It would appear that there are fundamental differences between the badger populations found on both islands and that badgers in England exist at far higher population densities than observed on this island. These differences may be such that many of the conclusions obtained from UK studies are not applicable to the Irish situation and vice versa.