An agreement was reached at a meeting on Wednesday in Roscrea between breed society representatives and the ICBF over the rollout of the planned Whole Herd Reporting Programme.

The agreement comes after months of negotiations and tensions between ICBF and the breed societies.

The programme is designed to ensure accurate data is recorded in pedigree herds for inclusion in genetic evaluations, including requirements on weighing and scoring animals in pedigree herds and capturing accurate birth data.

The programme is agreed on a pilot phase and will be reviewed on a 12-month basis.

ICBF will now start to work with individual breed societies to roll out the programme and to educate breeders on the requirements of the programme.

Commercial farmers will also be made aware of how they can purchase animals from these herds. Some concessions made include the manual recording of data as opposed to online recording. It is expected that herds will be able to join the new scheme from next month onwards.