The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is set to present a revised plan to amend the TB Eradication Programme, Agriland understands.

This plan will be presented to farm organisations ahead of follow-up meetings with stakeholders this week, following on from the extraordinary 'summit' meeting that took place earlier this month, it is understood.

At that earlier meeting, a slate of 30 proposals were put forward for consideration by stakeholders, with a view to amending the eradication programme in light of deteriorating metrics for TB in Ireland.

These proposals were met with some criticism by farm organisations, who called for changes to what was being recommended.

In the latest development, it is understood that Minister for Agriculture, Food, and the Marine Martin Heydon has invited stakeholders to bilateral meetings to discuss a revised plan.

Farm organisations have not yet received that revised plan, but are due to receive it before the meeting, which is scheduled to take place on Thursday of this week (May 22), it is believed.

Agriland understands that each farm organisation will be invited to bring four of their members to the bilateral meetings.

Speaking to Agriland recently, Minister Heydon said that the TB situation in Ireland at present is “a crisis of very significant proportion”.

"Only very recently a couple of years ago, we were having 20,000 reactors a year, last year we had 41,600. If I don't act very soon, we could be up to 60,00 reactors. I'm not going to let that happen on my watch," he said.

"I will invest more, I will put more focus in this space, and I need everyone to work with me, but I won't leave a space where we let the disease seep through. We've got to stop this rapid increase in the disease. We have to stabilise it, reduce it, and then we can credibly talk about eradication again," the minister said.