DAFM, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, are to hire 200 badger killers as part of its bTB eradication programme.
DAFM is seeking contractors who can supply around 200 trained operatives to carry out wildlife‑related TB control work across Ireland. The duties include capturing, shooting, and inspecting badgers, surveying badger setts, and assessing badger activity.
Contractors must be able to deploy operatives nationwide—primarily from September to June, though potentially year‑round—and must have the capacity to capture and kill 5,000 to 20,000 badgers annually. Tenderers must demonstrate appropriate training, firearms licensing and storage, and safe handling procedures for carcasses.
DAFM bTB Eradication Programme
This work supports the department’s bTb Eradication Programme, which includes a wildlife strategy. The contact for badger services is for five years, and the closing date for interested parties is the 6th March 2026.
Badgers are a protected species, so any capture, killing, or vaccination must be done under licence and only in areas where veterinary investigations indicate that badgers are the likely source of a TB outbreak.
In high‑risk areas, badgers may be snared and shot, while in designated zones they may be captured, scanned, and vaccinated.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has estimated that in 2024, it cost approximately €468 to vaccinate a captured badger and €660 to cull a snared badger.
DAFM said these figures was based on fixed and variable costs associated with capturing and vaccinating a single badger.
According to DAFM, badgers are captured using ‘stopped body restraints’ which is a department term for a wire snare.
Badger Snare Requirements
In 2024, in response to a parliamentary question, the then Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue, said badgers were captured under regulations set out in the Wildlife Act 1976.
These regulations dictate that a “stopped body restraint” must comply with the following conditions:
It is made of multi-strand steel wire 3 mm in width;
It incorporates a swivel to facilitate twisting;
It is of a minimum length of 80 cm and intended to trap badgers in accordance with a licence granted for that purpose to the Department of Agriculture and Food;
A metal runner is incorporated at one end of it which shall be 15mm by 3mm with 2 holes 4mm in diameter, a stop, a swivel and a “D” shackle; a ferrule is to act as the stop and is placed 32.5 cm from the end of the restraint to prevent strangulation;
It is designed so that when it is used it will be securely tied to a fixed object.
In 2024, the DAFM reported that 7,319 badgers had been snared/shot under the bTB eradication programme. It is estimated that over 66,000 badgers have been killed since 2014, despite a 2018 government pledge to phase out the killings in favour of vaccination.
Ireland and bTB
Ireland has been dealing with Bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) since 1950 when the first eradication programme was established. Despite all the cattle slaughter and badger killing Ireland currently has the highest rate of bTB in the EU.
According to DAFM, provisionally, as of 28th December 2025, on a rolling 12-month basis, herd bTB incidence was 5.77%.
The DAFM tender for badger killers is evidence that badgers continues to pay a lethal price for farmers failing to adhere to bovine tuberculosis prevention measures on their farms, as Ireland’s bTB incidence rate continues on an upward trajectory.
View:
Cft: auxiliary services for tb eradication programmes of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM)
https://www.etenders.gov.ie/epps/cft/prepareViewCfTWS.do?resourceId=7427917
Read: The Bovine TB Action Plan Addressing Bovine TB in Ireland
www.bovinetb.ie
Read: National Bovine Tuberculosis Statistics
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-agriculture-food-and-the-marine/collections/publications-reports-and-statistics/#national-bovine-tuberculosis-statistics/
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