Accounts prepared by the Department of Agriculture suggest that farmers could be facing bovine TB levies 60% higher than they are currently before the end of this year.
The Department has claimed to the State spending watchdog that farming organisations have already agreed to the levy increases and that the rise had been due to kick in before now.
The 2025 Department accounts, which were signed off by its secretary general Sinéad McPhillips for the Comptroller and Auditor General, state that the Department took in €7.85m in disease levies last year.
The accounts flag that this is more than €4.7m below the €12.607m sum it had been expecting to raise.
Commentary set alongside these figures say that the shortfall was down to delays in implementing a hike already agreed over three-and-a-half years ago with a TB forum group on which farming organisations sit.
“The decrease of €4.757m is due to a delay in plans to recoup additional expenditure on compensation schemes, by way of introducing an increase in disease levies as agreed in accordance with the financial working group of the TB forum 2023,” the note states.
“Given the complexity of these schemes, it is anticipated this recoupment will commence in 2026.”
2023 meeting
Minutes from the TB forum’s financial working group dated 12 January 2023 - a meeting attended by officers representing the Irish Farmers Association, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association and the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association - reference some sign of agreement from farming organisations on a TB levy hike tied to a previous years’ overall farmer TB compensation payout.
These minutes state that “in principle, farming organisations are prepared to discuss additional levies” if the additional levy revenue was passed back to herdowners eligible for TB compensation.
They note further that there was “apprehension” over the proposed level of the levy fluctuating depending on the level of compensation paid out the previous year.
These minutes claim that the working group’s chair noted that “organisations are willing to move on levies”.
The group has only met once subsequent to this 2023 meeting, but levies are not explicitly mentioned in this February 2023 meeting’s minutes, according to the Department's website.
