The latest projections from DAERA point to an annual bill for bovine TB in the 2024-2025 financial year that could be as high as £60m.

Briefing the Stormont Agriculture committee last Thursday, DAERA finance director Roger Downey confirmed that the total bill for the previous financial year was £55.7m, with £36.5m paid out in compensation for reactors.

However, higher staff costs, along with record numbers of TB reactor cattle, have put added strain on budgets.

In the five financial years between 2016-2017 and 2020-2021, the average annual cost of the TB programme was £38.4m, with an average annual compensation bill for reactor cattle of £21.35m.

Those costs have now virtually doubled and in the first six months of 2024, reactor numbers hit a new record high of 9,269 head, up 22% on the same period in 2023.

“We are currently projecting £40.8m in TB compensation this [financial] year. We are coming into the winter period now and that’s when animals are housed, so there’s a risk that TB compensation could go higher,” Downey told MLAs.

Some of that cost for reactors is offset by an increase in salvage value for those TB reactors deemed suitable for the food chain, with salvage income projected at around £11m this year.

However, there are other costs to include in the total bill such as private vets, internal DAERA staff costs and testing kits, said Downey.

He confirmed that around one sixth of the total resource budget that comes to DAERA from the Stormont Executive is now used to compensate for TB reactors.