The witnesses are all very welcome. Apologies have been received from Deputy Kenny. Before I start, I will read a note on privilege for the benefit of the witnesses. Witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to a committee. This means that a witness has a full defence in any defamation action for anything said at a committee meeting. However, witnesses are expected not to abuse this privilege and may be directed to cease giving evidence on the issue at the Chair's direction. Witnesses should follow the direction of the Chair in this regard and are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that, as is reasonable, no adverse commentary should be made against an identifiable third person or entity. Witnesses who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note that they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as witnesses giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on the matter. Privilege against defamation does not apply to the publication by the witnesses outside of the proceedings held by the committee of any matters arising from the proceedings.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against either a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Parliamentary privilege is considered to apply to the utterances of members participating online in a committee meeting where their participation is from within the parliamentary precinct. Members may not participate online in a public meeting from outside the parliamentary precincts. Any attempt to do so will result in the member having his or her online access removed. Everyone taking part is present here in the room. We have apologies from Deputy Kenny.

The agenda for today’s meeting is deer management. We are conscious that the witnesses’ organisations have been getting up and running over the last while. Members are keen to give that opportunity to get up and running as well as get an understanding of where things are going, what the situation is on the ground and what the next steps will be. The committee will hear from the following officials: Mr. Teddy Cashman, cathaoirleach of the Irish deer management strategy group; Dr. Damien Barrett, senior superintendent vet inspector, and Mr. Seppi Höna, inspector grade 1, from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine; Ms Catherine Comer, principal officer and director of wildlife enforcement and nature protection, Ms Claire Crowley, assistant principal officer, and Mr. Wesley Atkinson, regional manager, from the National Parks and Wildlife Service; and Mr. Colin Donnery, chief executive officer; Mr. Neil Keane, head of agriculture, and Mr. Michael Keegan, manager of the deer management programme, from the Farm Relief Services Co-Op. Tá fáilte rompu go léir.

The witnesses’ opening statements have been circulated. I will give witnesses the opportunity to read them and then we will move to questions and answers from members.

Members wanted this issue on the agenda to get a handle on where the landscape is at the moment. Farmers and road users will be very familiar with seeing the deer and encountering them at different stages along the way. I understand that the traffic report on a Cork radio station this morning referred to two young deer in the middle of the road on the county bounds. That is nothing unusual. I travel that piece of road often on the way up here. Last week, I came across three deer. I know that many people will be familiar with deer and farmers are fairly well experienced in dealing with them on the ground, whether that has to do with questions about TB, fencing being broken or the various different concerns they have.

The Cathaoirleach has already gone through the number of people in the room from different organisations, so I will not go through that part of my presentation.

I thank the committee for inviting us to attend today to update it on where we are at. The biggest issue is that deer numbers have increased significantly in recent years in several parts of the country, and this is evident from the impacts seen across the country. Based on the number of deer shot annually and the number of section 42 permits issued, further increases are predicted. Impacts from deer have been noted around the country as part of Ireland’s national forest inventory and the habitat assessments carried out by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, as part of Ireland’s reporting requirements on Natura 2000 sites. Further impacts are detailed in recent research carried out by UCC as part of a Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine-funded project relating to wild deer. This impacts forestry, biodiversity, farming, road safety and animal health.

It is important that we have sustainable management of our national wild deer population for the protection of biodiversity, newly planted forestry, pasture and crops, road safety, animal health, public health and, not least, the health and welfare of the deer themselves. The deer management strategy group was established in September 2022 by the Department, with support from the NPWS, to lead a drive to develop a renewed vision and strategy for the management of wild deer and to build on the work of the Irish deer management forum. This group is comprised of representatives from the Department, the NPWS and Coillte.

To inform the work of the group, a public consultation was conducted in December 2022 seeking the views of stakeholders on the management of deer in Ireland. Over 1,500 people responded from a wide variety of backgrounds, including, but not limited to, farmers, landowners, foresters, hunters, ecologists, academics and rural and urban dwellers. The main findings were that the main impacts of deer were considered to be on biodiversity, farming and forestry, and road safety. The main solutions put forward were deer culling, land management practices and a successful venison market. The main constraints to managing the deer population were the lack of collaboration, public opinion and a limited venison market. The findings of the survey were presented to a stakeholder meeting on 27 April 2023 and these findings were generally well received.

Subcommittees involving stakeholders with a particular interest, expertise or representation were established with a view to developing a series of recommendations. Each subcommittee was chaired by a member of the steering group. The subcommittees' remits were legislation, training and education, solutions for land management, collaboration and venison. The recommendations of these subcommittees were presented to the wider stakeholder group on 27 August 2023. There was considerable overlap in the recommendations of the various groups. As I stated previously, the recommendations were well received and, indeed, several farming organisation and hunting group representatives were very positive in their feedback and contributions on that day.

A final report was launched in December 2023 and the recommendations therein were brought in a memo to the Government by the then Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Charlie McConalogue. This was approved by the Government.

The recommendations have been grouped as short term and medium term. The overarching recommendations of the subcommittees were creation of a deer management agency, establishment of local deer management units, which has been completed under the auspices of the overall deer programme management tender, and changes to the open seasons order, which came into effect in February 2024. The short-term recommendations relate to the appointment of a programme manager and the development of an implementation plan. A procurement process was launched in spring 2024 and Farm Relief Services Co-Op, FRS, was successful in the tender process in early 2025.

The deer management strategy group met quarterly with the programme manager to review progress and implementation of the recommendations of the report. FRS has made good progress in establishing the deer management programme, recruiting staff and commencing the development of local deer management units. FRS will outline in more detail the establishment of those 15 units. This has involved the appointment of an overall programme manager, collaboration with and learning from NatureScot in Scotland, and deer management unit, DMU, selection and establishment. DMU co-ordinator recruitment has been completed for the 15 DMUs. IT systems, including a comprehensive tagging system, are being developed internally to aid the management of the programme.

Other short-term recommendations related to legislative changes involving the open seasons order for deer, review of current statutory instruments and legislation, and a revision of the section 42 permit application process under the Wildlife Acts. The open season order was amended in February 2024 to align with current dates in Northern Ireland. The section 42 application process was streamlined, ensuring a consistent approach across the country. The application process was also moved online, with this facility available since Tuesday, 5 May of this year. Amendments to veterinary public health legislation to facilitate greater local use have been requested.

The medium-to-long-term recommendations relate to the establishment of a deer management agency, enacting relevant legislation, ensuring a consistent deer management policy on State lands, education and training in forest design, and scheme specifications in relation to deer management. The number of licensed hunters is now at 7,000, and that number that has been increasing year on year. The number of deer being shot under licence has also increased under section 29 deer hunting licences and section 42 serious damage permits. The number of deer shot under section 29 during the 2023-24 season was over 69,000, which was an increase on the previous season, and the number of deer shot during the 2024-25 season has increased to 79,000, an increase of 10,000. In addition, the number of section 42 serious damage permits issued increased from 850 in 2019 to 1,339 in 2025, with the number of deer shot under those permits increasing from 5,600 to over 10,000 in the same period. The NPWS manages deer on its own land. The latest figures show that, since the 2024-25 season, there have been approximately 3,751 deer culled by the NPWS in national parks and nature reserves.

Regarding supports to incentivise the hunting of deer, the availability of suitable game handling and storage facilities in the locations where deer populations need to be managed is vital for the development of a sustainable wild venison industry. Funding has been sought and approved for the purchase of five refrigerated larders to store carcases in such locations, preserving the carcases and allowing the game handler an opportunity to collect multiple carcases for further handling efficiently. An incentive to encourage the hunting of small, low-value female deer, thereby reducing the breeding capacity of the deer population, is something we would like to see and we hope to bring a proposal to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine shortly.

The increase in deer numbers in recent years necessitates a response to reduce the deer numbers to more sustainable levels to prevent negative impacts on forestry, biodiversity, road safety, farming and animal health. The deer management strategy group is co-ordinating a sustainable, collaborative approach in the management of deer. Collaborative and landscape-level deer management is the norm in the wider European context. The group sought the views of all relevant stakeholders and produced a report with recommendations within 12 months of its establishment. The report has been approved by the Government. One of the main tenets of enabling the recommendations of the report has been the appointment of a national deer programme manger and the establishment of 15 deer management units. FRS will provide further detail on how this has been rolled out to date and future plans. However, the importance of this co-ordinated national approach cannot be overemphasised.

The deer management strategy group continues to implement the recommendations of the report in conjunction with the various stakeholder groups. From the outset, this group has gone about its work in a collaborative manner, engaging with the stakeholders, identifying the issues and endeavouring to find pragmatic and sensible solutions. We are grateful for the engagement of stakeholders to date but we need their continued support to sustainably manage the deer population in the years ahead.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present our work to it and I thank members for their interest. I ask for their support as we progress this project over the years ahead.

I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to speak about the deer management programme that is being implemented by FRS Co-Op under the direction of key stakeholders, including the deer management strategy group that was established in late 2023 by the Department, the NPWS, Coillte and other stakeholders.

We are here today to outline both the progress made to date in implementing an effective, co-ordinated approach to deer management in Ireland, but also to discuss some of the challenges in dealing with this issue.

In February 2025, FRS Co-Op was awarded the contract to implement and deliver a number of recommendations from the deer management strategy group. The scope of FRS Co-Op's contract includes a requirement to appoint a programme manager to oversee this deer management strategy, establish a number of DMUs in deer hot spot areas of the country, engage with State bodies to develop a structured deer management programme, establish a new system for collecting data on deer numbers and management in Ireland, and investigate the market opportunities for venison. FRS Co-Op carries out its work under the direction of the expert group that comprises the deer management strategy group, and we work collaboratively with all of the key stakeholders on that committee.

Overall, the aim of FRS Co-Op’s deer management programme is to transform deer management efforts from a fragmented, reactive model toward a more structured, evidence-based and sustainable approach nationwide. After being awarded the contract, FRS Co-Op appointed Mr. Keegan as programme manager to oversee and manage the deer management programme for FRS. In line with the recommendations from the Government’s deer management strategy group, our first move was to establish 15 dedicated DMUs that covered areas identified as deer hot spots. Following this, we then moved to appoint a dedicated co-ordinator to each DMU, which would allow us to facilitate and manage a more strategic approach to deer management in the areas covered by each unit, with each DMU co-ordinator essentially working in collaboration with landowners, farmers, local hunters and other stakeholders. FRS appointed its first DMU co-ordinator in June last year and all positions were filled within two months. Alongside this, FRS also developed a dedicated and bespoke IT system to record the key data points around the deer management programme.

Given the complexities of implementing this programme, engagement and collaboration are key priorities for FRS. To this end, FRS has put significant time into meeting with key stakeholder groups such as individual farmers, farmer representative organisations, hunters, hunting organisations, private foresters, environmental groups, policy-makers, meat industry representatives as well as State bodies like Bord Bia, ESB, Bord na Móna and Coillte, with a focus on engagement, discussion, consensus building and education. We have participated in public meetings of farmers and hunting groups to answer key questions and provide further information about the local DMUs and co-ordinators. Additionally, FRS has participated in knowledge transfer events with international colleagues to discuss best practice in deer management. We visited Scotland and worked with NatureScot to understand the challenges it has seen in Scotland. Last October, we took part in the NPWS’s successful cross-national knowledge transfer events with Scottish wildlife services, discussing topics such as managing deer populations on high-amenity areas, policies, and local deer management.

We have also proactively engaged with local and specialist media outlets to ensure that information about the deer management programme is relayed to key stakeholders, and to encourage landowners, farmers and hunters to engage with FRS to make this work. Our stakeholder engagement efforts have been particularly important to connect with the hunting community in Ireland, where we have focused on providing information on the deer management programme. We have always emphasised that the deer management programme can only succeed with strong collaboration with local hunters and other stakeholders. FRS Co-Op's approach to implementing the deer management programme is to act as a co-ordinator between landowners and hunters, helping to connect landowners with a deer problem with local hunters or groups that can provide a solution. This is particularly important in areas where co-ordination, scale or consistency has been lacking up to now. This collaborative approach has been a central principle of the strategy group’s work and one we strongly support.

On top of this on-the-ground work, FRS has also focused on improving data collection and reporting of deer numbers. Historically, one of the greatest barriers to effective deer management has been the lack of reliable, shared data on population densities and cull numbers. To combat this, we have invested in a dedicated IT system for our deer management programme, including the development of a mobile app called DeerConnect, which will allow hunters to identify locations of deer sightings and track deer kills. This will provide important data around the geographic spread of deer in Ireland. The DeerConnect app is currently at the live-testing phase to test its functionality, with approximately 200 users actively using it right now. Since the live-testing phase commenced last month, the feedback from hunters is that it is working very well and we will soon officially launch the DeerConnect app to support our data collection work.

The other key piece of work that we have commenced in the past year was to begin market research on the opportunities for venison and to investigate new routes to market for venison meat. We have had very positive engagement with Bord Bia and the meat processing industry to begin investigating the market opportunities for venison. In particular, the data collection system as part of the deer management programme will help close the traceability loop for venison that will be key to unlocking viable market opportunities.

Overall, the first year of work for FRS has largely focused on the establishment of the key structures to underpin a new era of effective and strategic deer management in Ireland. With these structures in place, we have now moved into the Implementation phase of our deer management programme and we expect to see a significant increase in our data collection programme around the recording of deer sightings and harvests as our on-the-ground co-ordinators continue to work with local landowners, farmers and hunters. This will ultimately be the foundation for a deer management programme that is sustainable and delivers results.

I sincerely wish to thank the hunters and representative bodies for their engagements, all the farming groups, the Minister and the previous Minister of State for their support for the programme.

I look forward to any questions members may have.

I thank the witnesses. A lot of farmers and road users will be very familiar with seeing deer around and coming across different incidents involving them. We all know that there seems to be a bigger population out there. How do we know how many are in an area? Is there some technique to get an estimate? How do we know if we are at the point of overpopulation? What is the threshold?

I will answer part of the question and I will hand over to Mr. Höna for the second part. We have been very careful in relation to deer management not to focus on numbers, as such, because there is really no effective way of counting numbers of deer. We focus on the impacts they are having. It is easier to measure the impacts than the actual deer numbers. More road accidents in an area are an impact, for example. Mr. Höna has figures around this that might provide a bit of background in terms of the best way of approach this.

I thank the committee for having us here today. To put it into perspective, every five years, we do what is called a national forest inventory. We basically do an assessment of the state of play of the forests. As part of that, we do impact assessments to see what impacts deer are having on our woodlands. The last one was done in 2022 and the previous was done in 2017. That showed a nearly 25% increase in the damage we were seeing at plot level. We know definitively where the damage is at forest level. As part of the 2023 report that Mr. Cashman alluded to in his opening statement, we are looking at impacts because it is very difficult to count deer. Sometimes, we like a number but it is very difficult to put a real number on it. We are looking at reducing the numbers and hopefully seeing the impact on agriculture and farmland going down.

I understand that a public consultation was done with over 1,500 different inputs to it. The plan that was put together was based on that. Other than going out shooting, were other proposals recommended arising from that, for example, in terms of road safety or other measures?

I have the proposals and I will read them out, along with the percentages that went with them, to give a background. We asked what the importance was of a range of options in addressing the issues and impacts. Deer culling was the highest at 86.3%. Supports for landowners and land managers to control deer was 78%. A commercially successful wild venison market was 69%. Increased access to education and training for hunters was 69%. We asked about enabling hunters and gamekeepers by contracting them. These options were all to do with culling. Amendment or extension of the open seasons order, which we spoke about, was 63%. Increased exclusion of deer from important woodland areas was another option, which related to fencing more than culling. Access to professional deer managers was another option and is what we have been implementing. Reclassification of sika and fallow deer as invasive species was another option and has happened at a European level lately. We can get into that one along with the NPWS, which will be able to give the background to that. Another option listed was a financial incentive to cull deer. We are working on that one. Legislative amendments or modifications was another option. That is what came out of the report.

That is the range of options. I want to move on to members. We will do six minutes per member, which gives us a chance to come back for another round if needed.

I welcome the witnesses. I have a couple of questions to ask and I will give them the opportunity to respond in the six minutes. I am looking to get more of a picture in respect of this. Is it regional? Are there specific areas that we might call black spots, for want of a better term? Deer are not a problem until they are a problem. We do not have a problem with deer, and then all of a sudden TB breaks out in a bovine herd and deer are the problem. There might be a view among people that there are no deer in an area until one night someone driving their car hits a deer. Is it more regional? Are there black spots or is it across the entire country?

In the context of the control of herd of wild deer, a couple of things crossed my mind during the opening statements. Mr. Cashman mentioned Northern Ireland. What is the story in the Border area? Deer do not know where the Border is and do not respect it. That is one thing.

I do not like the word “cull”, but when it comes to control of the wild deer herd, what rights are there on private right? There was mention of State land, Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. If there is an issue in an area where the numbers of deer are dwelling, if you like, on private land, what rights exist?

It was mentioned that part of the plan is to develop a wild venison market. If you develop that market, achieve the goal and get the herd to a controllable number, having eliminated a lot of females, will it be possible to service the market?

Those are my questions. Between the three groups there are four minutes.

On the final question, if we got to that level we would be delighted. That would be a real measure of success if we did not have enough venison to supply a market here.

It would be a success on the one hand.

It would be successful, I guarantee the Senator. I will hand over to FRS to answer the three previous questions on black spots in specific areas, the scenario in Northern Ireland and issues regarding private land because they relate to ongoing management.

The Senator made a good point on venison. They have a phrase in Australia, "Eat the problem." If we get to that point and the problem is resolved through the sale of venison, everyone would be happy.

I was in Australia. They eat roadkill.

One of the things that is not in place at the moment but that we are trying to provide is a traceability system for venison. The system we are trying to put in place will facilitate tracing. I will ask Mr. Keegan to answer on the black spots and where we have set up the DMUs.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak here today. This is a national programme. We have to try to achieve an element of national coverage. When we looked at setting up the deer management units, we examined the evidence that was publicly available on where the problem was deemed greatest. We are, however, trying to have as much national coverage as possible. As the Senator said, deer are not a problem until they are seen. What tends to happen is that they spread. County Wicklow is probably the biggest county in the country for deer. Areas that might not necessarily have a deer problem could become the County Wicklow of the future if they are not managed in a sustainable way. Just because there is not a massive deer problem in an area does not necessarily mean that there does not need to be structured management in place.

On the North of Ireland, I agree that deer do not recognise borders. However, we only have jurisdiction in the South at the moment. Going forward, it would be a question about whether there can be some cross-Border collaboration. It would be a good idea, and it will be needed. We have had contact from people in the North, but, as stated, we do not have any jurisdiction there. We are trying to get our house in order first.

On private land, landowners and people who hold shooting rights are the only ones who have rights on the relevant land. We do not have any rights on anyone’s land. We can really only work with the people who are willing to work with us. Ultimately, the landowner retains the right as to who he lets onto his property.

I welcome the witnesses. I am from Graiguemanagh in County Kilkenny. Kilkenny is a very popular destination for stag and hen parties, but it is a different type of stag that is causing problems down our way. I know we have a lot of enthusiastic young bucks in this room. Kilkenny has too many stags. Half are sleeping in bushes and the other half are eating bushes. It is a huge problem.

I will start on the area of road safety. Because of the huge increase in the numbers of stags and deer, particularly in my part of the country, an awful lot of incidents and accidents have occurred. The local authority has been very responsible in relation to putting up signage, etc., but it is a major issue. Have the witnesses any evidence or data about the number of vehicle collisions that occur annually? Is there a breakdown per county? Are some counties affected more than others? In my constituency, whether it is Thomastown, Graiguemanagh, Freshford or places in the south of the county, there are numerous issues.

My second question is on the estimated deer population throughout the country. Is there a guesstimate as to how many deer there are? Is there a breakdown per county? Are some counties particularly challenged in comparison with others?

On road safety, we had interaction Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, a couple of weeks ago to see what figures it has on this. I do not have figures with me. TII has reasonably good figures for national roads – motorways and otherwise – but there is very little information available for deer sightings or accidents involving deer on tertiary or secondary roads.

I can give Mr. Cashman details of three-----

I know.

-----that happened within a mile radius of my house in the past three months.

I know that. The problem is that they are not recorded on a database.

Those incidents were recorded and reported to gardaí.

There needs to be a change in how they are recorded in order that there is a standardised procedure. All it says on the form, as I understand it, is “struck an animal”. It does not say what kind of animal or whatever. We will engage with TII again on this. It asked for collaboration with us on this. We will collaborate, but we do not have very good information outside of that relating to the main motorways. TII has responded with regard to particular areas, for example, in the Cathaoirleach’s constituency. It has started to increase the amount of deer fencing along the Macroom bypass because there have been major reports of deer sightings and of deer crossing the road. It is responding to what it is seeing on the major infrastructure. It said that to us. That is one example. We need to build more data on that matter, we need to engage with An Garda Síochána and others and we need a more solid response.

I will ask the National Parks and Wildlife Service to comment more on that matter. Mr. Atkinson might have more on it and on roads.

No, that is fine. It is more just the number of deer in Ireland or the guesstimate in that regard.

When I came into this role four years ago, I was told that there were 600,000 deer in Ireland, plus or minus 200,000.

Jesus. Okay.

That gives the Deputy an idea of the accuracy of the figures we have for deer. It is impossible. All we know is that the numbers increased dramatically over the Covid period because there was very little hunting done. We were dealing with a large rise in numbers up to 2022 when there was a fall-off in hunting and much less consumption of venison. A lot of time was lost.

On the basis of Mr. Cashman’s data, are there certain areas which are particularly exposed at the moment? One of the presentations contains a breakdown of the different deer management units.

What we are relying on is some of the work done by Dr. Simone Ciuti and his team in UCD. They have identified six hot spots for deer throughout the country, including Donegal, Wicklow, Kerry, south Tipperary and parts of Galway. I am missing one area, but that will give the Deputy an idea of the areas where there are very high concentrations of deer.

As as Mr. Keegan stated, it is a question of trying to deal with other areas before they also become a problem.

In terms of forestry, how much money will be set aside or spent annually to try to protect plantations from damage caused by deer?

I can come back to the Deputy on overall expenditure. We did some analysis. We will take the reference years from 2023 to 2025, inclusive. In 2023, we fenced over 18,500 m. In 2024, we fenced 22,000 m. In 2025, we fenced 52,000 m. What we are seeing is a significant increasing trend. That coincides with landowners preferring to plant broad leaves. With the ash reconstitution scheme, some farmers are offering to go back in with broad leaves. We obviously have measures to help those farmers protect their forests, so we are seeing a significant increase in demand for those measures to protect from deer. The trends are all going upwards with regard to this matter.

Roughly, how much would 52,000 m of fencing cost?

One would be talking about well over €1 million. Contractors are charging about €20 to €22 per metre, roughly speaking, so it is a very costly measure.

Over 70,000 deer were culled last year. Are specific targets set every year in terms of culling or is it done on a case-by-case or year-by-year basis?

This comes back to the issue about impacts rather than numbers and the impacts we will be working through because there are no real means of doing the numbers. The NPWS might give a bit of background to the numbers that are there already as to where they come from just to give an idea of what that is about.

I can give the numbers for the 2024-25 season. The Deputy is right. The figure was just under 80,000. If we look at that in comparison with the 2023-24 season, we can see that just under 70,000 were culled. This means that there was an increase of 10,000 in the number culled. The numbers are published on the website. These are the ones relating to deer shot under the provisions of section 29. Licences for hunting are granted under the latter. There are numbers of deer that are shot under section 42. Under that section, permits are granted for shooting deer that are causing serious damage. In 2025, the number was just over 10,000, which was quite similar to 2024. The numbers are all published and are widely available online.

The venison market has been identified as fundamental in terms of the success and sustainability of the overall plan. What are the major barriers with regard to developing a market? What work is happening in terms of the traceability issue that many processors have? Can the witnesses drill down into that for us and provide a good outline in respect of it? Will the deer connect data system or the app have any bearing or benefit when it comes to developing the market?

I will hand over to Mr. Donnery, because he has done a lot of work in that area.

I will give the Deputy an idea from field to fork of how we see this working. The hunter has an app. When he shoots an animal, he takes a picture of it and the app geotags where he shot it. Effectively, he tags it with a bar code. That goes into the system and tracks where the deer has come from into the factory. We have a problem finding out where deer are, so there is a deer sighting aspect to the app in order that farmers and hunters can take pictures and geotag where they see deer.

We had some research on consumer habits in terms of venison. Funnily enough, younger people are much more interested in it. Venison is a really lean meat that is high in protein. Young people are much more interested in high-protein foods at the moment. Obviously, the Irish market is the number one market. We also looked at the UK trends. There is a growing trend in terms of high-protein products.

This app is in the testing phase.

Yes.

When it is rolled out nationally, is it going to be the antidote to unlocking matters in terms of the processors?

If we look at what is happening at the moment, deer carcases are arriving into meat factories and nobody knows where they have come from. Hunters come along and say that they shot them somewhere. The app basically closes that loop in terms of understanding where the meat is coming from. We need to promote the shooting of female deer in order that we can trace where it is going.

Is the current lack of traceability preventing processors from dealing with venison?

I would not say it is preventing them processing animals. One of the challenges in the marketplace relates to the fact that the price which hunters are being paid for venison is quite low, at somewhere between €1.50 and €2 per kilogram. In order for hunters to be incentivised to get more, the research shows that if it is a traceable product, it is going to attract a higher price in the marketplace. The latter would mean that hunters would be getting a higher price, which, in turn, would mean that, hopefully, more deer would be shot.

In terms of the geographical availability, without naming names, what kind of processors are accepting these animals? Are there geographical constraints in certain areas? What are the barriers?

There is certainly a geographical challenge. Hunters living in the midlands will typically have to drive for an hour and a half or two hours to drop off carcases. They are only receiving €2 per kilogram, so it is nearly costing them money to get there. A proposal is going to the Department about providing larders and fridges in those regions and introducing an incentive scheme for hunters to make up for the low price per kilogram. If we can promote the product in the market and if retailers charge more for it, one would hope that the price for the hunter would be driven up, which would mean more deer being shot.

Where are the proposed locations for the larders?

We have five proposed locations, namely Boyle, Wicklow, Roscrea in County Tipperary, Kilkenny and Wicklow.

One issue in Mayo is where forests are felled, which displaces deer onto the lands of nearby farmers. What level of co-ordination is happening to try to prevent that? I refer, for example, to notification. Is that happening such that if a forest is going to be felled, a management system might be put in place?

We will hand over to Mr. Sweeney. Coillte would know more about that.

I can speak for forestry as a whole, but, in the context of the deer management units, when forests are felled, deer are being managed at a landscape level. If it adjoins someone's land, they will be working with their colleagues, whether they are private foresters or Coillte foresters, and will be notified by the DMU of the plans relating to the relevant. Efforts will be increased in certain areas to mitigate whatever is coming down the road. It is about managing deer at a landscape level by means of a collaborative approach involving all landowners. The same would work each way with the things that are happening in farming practices. By their nature, deer will move about. If there are pressure points or something happens, they will move to more favourable areas. Instead of reacting to that, it will need to be planned.

Is that happening in practice?

That is what is going to happen as part of the deer management units, which are in the process of being set up.

When is that due to happen?

The deer management units are in the process. A number of deer management units are up and running.

The deer management units are set up and we are working collaboratively with Coillte as part of the deer management strategy group, DMSG, overall. That is an ongoing process.

Is this collaborative process established? What is the system at a local level?

The Deputy’s time is up.

I apologise.

There will be another round.

I thank the witnesses for being here. In County Laois, we have places like the Slieve Bloom Mountains, Emo and Abbeyleix that have a lot of deer. When the motorway went through Portlaoise, Coillte or Transport Infrastructure Ireland had fences on both sides of it. That stretch of the road is not as bad for accidents with deer as the stretch of the road from Abbeyleix to Durrow, where a lot of accidents happen and which is not fenced. I wanted to make that point. I am not saying fencing will stop it, but it certainly is a help.

At what point will the Government move from strategy and co-ordination to setting measurable national deer population reduction targets and what are those targets? I ask for a one-minute answer.

In relation to Abbeyleix and that particular stretch of road, I raised that issue with Transport Infrastructure Ireland when we met with it last week. You can see the black spot on the road. I had heard quite a bit about it. When you go beyond the hotel and head for Durrow, there have been serious issues along that stretch.

Yes.

The TII said it was one of its priority areas, but I am not sure what was done with it. I raised the issue with them, particularly that piece in County Laois, because I knew it had been quite an issue.

From the point of view of measurable targets, that issue comes back to numbers and not being able to measure them properly. I will come back to FRS on this, but this programme is only about a year old from the point of view of implementation. The policy piece has been gone through for three to four years but the implementation is only in place for probably about a year. It is going to take a collaborative approach between all the Departments to get there. However, we will get there, because there has been good Government support on the financial side to get this up and running. We have funding for the co-ordinators who are looking at the issues around larders and the incentive projects, but it is very much going to be on the whole issue around the impacts both on national and private lands and in forestry. The other point I will make is there has been a lot of collaboration with the NatureScot on this to understand how this has worked abroad. That company is 20 years at it.

I have to move on. Mr. Cashman can talk all day but the Cathaoirleach will only give me six minutes. How will the proposed deer management agency differ in powers and accountability from the current multi-agency structure that already exists? Can anyone answer that? Our witnesses can think about it. I will move on to the next question.

I will ask about the sale of venison. I was very upbeat going home from the Dáil last night when I heard on the late news that the EU is banning Brazilian beef. I jumped up out of my seat on the train. I was very happy that I defended that against the odds of some people in the Oireachtas who did not. I would prefer one slice of deer meat to a slice of Brazilian beef any day. I ask everybody here today to please ensure they put some of that ring-fenced money into trying to promote the sale of venison. That is all I want to say. I will leave that at that.

What safeguards are being put in place to ensure biodiversity protection and deer welfare remain central as culling activities increase? They are going to have to increase. That is a very quick question.

I will refer to the NPWS on safeguards from the point of view of biodiversity because that is its area. I will go to its representatives on that and come back to the other two questions after that.

In relation to biodiversity, there is ongoing monitoring of areas around the country. The NPWS is constantly looking at that and we have to report at EU level on that at various stages. That is ongoing. The most recent reports were sent last year following a five-year monitoring programme. It is done on a five-year cycle. On an ongoing basis that is happening already.

I have a question about TB. There are suggestions that there is no scientific proof that deer are transferring TB. When deer are tested, what is the percentage of deer that are shot that test positive for TB? Can someone can answer that question so we can put it to bed?

The answer to that question is not quite that as simple. When we look at the submissions sent in from across the country, of the plucks from deer submitted to our laboratories and what level of them have TB, overall nationally it is 2%.

It is 2% that have it.

It is 2% in that context but it is a bit more complex than that in the sense that we have research linking whole genome sequencing in County Wicklow, and the same strains of TB have been identified in that area in cattle, badgers and deer. Further research has shown the density of deer is a factor in this as well. Where there is a high density of deer, particularly in areas where there is a high density of sika, there is an increased risk found.

Is Dr. Barrett is saying sika are more prevalent in carrying TB than the other deer?

They seem to be. It is very hard to untwine that-----

My time is nearly up and I have to ask this question. When you go to the factory with cattle, you can see straight away when sorting the animal that there are TB lesions on them. That will be detected straight away and they can see it. With the deer, is it the same thing? These are the questions the public are asking me.

They do not go to a factory the way the cattle go to a factory.

I understand that, but they do skin them.

They are eviscerated in the wild out in the open. Hunters are trained in to identify this. We ask people to submit samples for our culture, but the truth of the matter is we do not get-----

Will Dr. Barrett answer the question? There is public money involved in this. If someone is out hunting, we know what happens when the deer is shot; they blood the deer. At that stage, can the Department not put something in place to be able to say five deer were shot last night in the Emo area, for example, and the five of them were positive for TB.

There is no public money. They are not receiving incentives at the moment.

We gave €3.6 million. Is that correct?

That is not for the hunting of deer.

Is there no money?

We are discussing the potential for incentives to encourage people to hunt deer but that is not on the table yet.

Surely to God, if anything comes out of this meeting, it is whether we could get money for those people who are hunting so that when they shoot the deer they can say that deer has lesions. That is the most important thing to come out of here today. We can talk in circles about TB and whether there are carriers. Everybody tells me it was the outbreak of the deer. When they lived in an area, there was no TB but then there was an outbreak of TB. A person could be in an enclosed area like I am in the middle of a town and get an outbreak as well. The only thing I could blame is rabbits because there are plenty of them. What I would like to see is a positive outcome saying that the person out shooting deer, who is licensed and doing everything right, and is doing the country a favour by trying to keep them culled, that when the Department does the job, it should be able to record that. It is most important to say yes, they had lesions, or no, they did not. My time is up.

Deer may be a part of an epidemiological picture but it is one part of several risk factors, and we need to consider all of them.

Before I go on to the next speaker, Dr. Barrett had a number of figures about TB and the deer; one was 2%. He said it was part of the picture. Does he want to elaborate on that?

I went on to say that when we did whole genome sequencing in an area in County Wicklow, we found that the strains of TB in cattle, deer and badgers were identical. They were related.

What kind of percentage?

In that study in County Wicklow, we were looking at about 16% in that area.

However, the numbers are probably exponentially larger there than in other part of the country.

I thank all the guests for coming in and for their opening statements. I am from County Clare, whose eastern part is very much affected by deer, as the guests are probably well aware. This has a serious effect on forestry, biodiversity, farming, road safety, which is a big issue, and animal health. These all give rise to serious concerns to people on the eastern side of the county. I see there are 15 deer management units throughout the country. Are there offices located anywhere throughout the country?

We have 15 deer management units across the country. We have FRS offices in most of the regions.

Where is the office in the Clare region?

We have an FRS office in Ennis.

Very good. It is good to know that. I might get the details off Mr. Keane.

Sure.

That is positive. I am hearing from people in Clare that although co-ordinators are out meeting people, the people do not see any improvement on the ground. For how long has the co-ordination been in the county?

To answer that one, I will go back to FRS. We are up and running for only a little over a year at this stage, so maybe the Deputy will want to talk to Mr. Keegan about it. It will take time.

We have 15 deer management unit regions and nine co-ordinators covering the 15.

Nine.

Three of those are part-time and six of them are full-time. They have been employed only since 11 August, which was when we had full employment. There was a period of training for the staff, which took a bit of time. The co-ordinators have done a huge amount of work on the ground, including stakeholder engagement. It is going to take time. It is important to point out that this is the first effort of co-ordinated deer management on a national scale ever to take place in the country. There will be a lot to be learned along the way. We have done a huge amount of work trying to establish what best practice looks like and what good looks like. To that end, we met representatives of NatureScot and have a great collaboration with it on a number of occasions. Its representatives have been over to us and we have been over to them. International evidence shows that this is not a short-term process. It will take a good few years to put something in place that works really well and properly and to start to see results on the ground. Our function here is to put the structures in place. The stakeholder engagement is key to that.

Very good. As far as I can see, and based on the word I am hearing, the deer population is increasing in Clare. Do the guests have any idea of the number of deer culled in the past 12 months in the county?

Ms Crowley might know if we have information on section 29 licences in Clare.

In County Clare, 3,289 deer were shot under section 29 deer hunting licences in the 2024–25 season. The statistics are obviously a year behind. Under section 42 in Clare, the figure was 183.

So, it is approximately 3,400 deer, according to the 2024–25 figures.

Yes.

Do the witnesses have any idea whether the deer population in the county is increasing or decreasing?

We have no figures for that, to be honest. Until we have a scenario where we are taking out large numbers of deer every year, the population will not decrease. First of all, we need to stabilise the population. A point that needs to be made on this is that we are seeking to create a sustainable population of deer, not exterminate or eliminate them. Having a sustainable state is what we are after. That will take time. We do not have figures to say which way the population is going. We are only working off indications from road traffic accidents and impacts on forestry and farming. We are building infrastructure to measure the numbers.

Of the 3,400 deer culled in County Clare, have any been tested for TB? Are there figures on that?

We would not have those figures to hand here today.

It seems to be still a concern, even though we are told the percentage is very low, at 2%. The figure mentioned for Wicklow was 16%, if I am not mistaken.

Yes.

Would any of the deer culled in the county have been tested?

I cannot tell the Deputy that at this moment. I do not have figures on that for County Clare.

Would it be possible to find out and get back to me on it?

It would by all means be possible to find out the figures for County Clare and revert to the Deputy.

That is very good because TB is a serious concern in my county. Unfortunately, many farmers have suffered because of it. We believe the badger is the main carrier of TB but there are also concerns about deer.

I seek clarification. There is a figure of 2% for deer tested and found to be reactors. Not every carcass is got back, so 2% is only part of-----

Two percent of what is being submitted.

So, there could be a whole swathe of other-----

Yes, there could. We do not know. We cannot comment on the others.

I thank Dr. Barrett.

On this topic, how many were actually submitted out of the 79,000 killed last year?

I do not have that number to hand but it would be very small, much lower than----

Less than a hundred?

It would be in the hundreds, at most.

How do you get one of the 7,000 licences issued? What criteria must be met to obtain a licence?

You have to apply online to our new system. As a first-time hunter, you have to have certified training. You have to prove you have been trained-----

Trained to shoot a gun?

No, trained in deer hunting. There are three specific training courses approved, and you have to have one of those completed and submitted proof you have completed it. You also have to have a firearms certificate from An Garda Síochána, with limits assessed at local level. NPWS staff on the ground will make an assessment. Quite often, they will know the people concerned and therefore know whether they have competency on top of the fact that they have training.

I presume the training would allow a shooter to tell a male from a female and such things from a distance.

They should be able to identify the species.

They should be able to, but possibly not.

I am assuming they do.

I reckon there are many hunters shooting for the craic. It is a matter of whatever comes in front of them. The talk is of culling females. How will the Department go about that? Obviously, there are more females than males. Is there any plan?

I might hand over to Mr. Keegan on that. He has more experience in this area.

Part of our role is to try to educate both hunters and landowners about best practice. As a farmer and someone who has spent his entire life shooting deer, shooting them has become second nature to me, but there are many people who might need a little help, particularly when starting off.

The hunter competence assessment programme, HCAP, certificate is geared towards exactly what the Deputy described, namely, identifying species, sex and all the rest. It is not that difficult during the season to see the difference between male and female. It is clear. The males have antlers and the females do not.

I know but I am referring to spotting them from a distance.

Suffice it to say that if you are doing this and have all the proper equipment, you will clearly see the difference. It is not that difficult.

And are the hunters aware that the idea is to cull females?

As I have said, part of our role is to try to educate hunters. Most would be educated but there are those who are not.

Our role here is to try to educate people as to that fact to try to reduce the numbers-----

With the engagement then with the stakeholders, FRS spoke to 1,500 people or so, but there are 7,000 licenceholders. Is there a plan to get to speak to everybody or what is the story there?

Just to clarify, that 1,500 is the initial stakeholder engagement process before FRS ever became involved. That was on the IDMSG side of things. The stakeholder engagement we are doing is with hunters and landowners on the ground primarily and, obviously, Coillte, national parks and all the other important stakeholders. That is an ongoing process daily. We are meeting them daily. Our guys on the ground are meeting them all the time and they are putting that message out there with them the whole time.

Dr. Barrett spoke about the number of samples FRS was getting. How do we know that there are 79,000 killed? Are hunters holding their hands up to say they have killed X number of deer? I had burgers and steaks last year and I do not know if they were flagged as "I have killed a deer" or whatever, so how does FRS know that there are 79,000 killed? Do the witnesses know what I am getting at? Is everybody holding up their hand and saying, "I have killed ten in the past year, "I have killed 20", or whatever? How does that work?

Everyone who gets issued a section 29 deer hunting licence, when they reapply the following year, must give their deer hunting returns for the season they have just completed, so it is self-declaration but they have to tell us what they shot in order to get their licence for the following year. If they do not tell us-----

It is a stab in the dark then.

It has always been that way. With the numbers, I think you can only compare year on year and they have been increasing slightly but it is not a huge jump or a huge drop. You would imagine that people are-----

Before 2022 then, before the talks of the deer management strategy group, what kind of numbers were being killed, and what is the difference since FRS got on board? Are there more killed? Obviously, there are more killed every year because the population grows and so on, but what do the witnesses see themselves doing differently from what was done before? People were going out and killing deer already. What do the witnesses see that will be the big impact that they will make on society? We can cut back and set back forest plantations on the road. We can cut vegetation in order that it is more visible for cars and stuff and that there is a bit more of a gap that we can see. All those kinds of things can be done, but what difference are the witnesses going to make to the population of deer?

One other thing is the cost. What is the cost of the deer management group? What is it costing the State?

From the point of view of what success looks like, going back to a few years prior to 2022, the big elephant in the room in that period was Covid. I mentioned that earlier in this scenario, the numbers in those years previous were probably greatly diminished because less hunting went on during Covid and there was less opportunity for selling venison. The previous deer management forum finished in 2018, and just prior to that there was some engagement around this process. What we hope for is an outcome from this scenario. The initial piece is that everybody would collaborate together from the point of view of addressing the problem and putting infrastructure in place so we are building an infrastructure, first of all. That is the main thing we are doing. We are getting people out on the ground to co-ordinate, getting opportunities for refrigeration and taking in venison in a local area, and building a market around the venison. It is a slow enough-----

Who will pay for the refrigeration?

We are engaging with the Department on that. We talk about looking for five larders around the country.

And the Government will pay for that.

Yes. That is the plan.

What is the cost to the State every year for Mr. Cashman's group?

The biggest one that has been finalised - and those issues have not been finalised completely yet - is the co-ordination piece, which is a contract for over €3.6 million over four years.

The witnesses are all welcome. To go back to Dr. Barrett's thing on the TB in Wicklow, there are parts of east Galway and other parts of the country that are black spots. Have the witnesses done analyses of TB in those areas where there are a lot of deer?

That was fairly in-depth analysis that was carried out in County Wicklow. We do not have the evidence for other parts of the country, but absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. We simply do not have it.

So they are a part of the picture of-----

Well, we cannot rule them out as being part of the picture.

That is perfect.

To Mr. Höna, forestry is being done and grants given to farmers. Why is there not an obligation that a 2.5 m fence is put up? Most deer are eating farmers' grass around the country every day of the week.

From a scheme point of view, we are trying to keep the deer out of the forestry, not in the forestry.

They are in it already.

I know, but looking at the trends in afforestation that I mentioned earlier, there is an increasing trend for more broadleaves.

But if you are trying to keep them out of the forestry, would it not make sense then to put the fence up high enough to not let them in?

In deer areas, as the Deputy knows, the broadleaves have to be protected, so it is up to the registered forester in conjunction with his landowner to choose that option-----

But it is up to the Department of agriculture to decide what the terms and conditions are.

We do sometimes. We often insist on deer fencing.

Why would it not be a standard practice? As regards the amount of grass deer are eating, east Galway is tortured with deer at the moment. There are even roads being blocked at night when people would be driving. That is how bad it is. You could see 200 or 300 of them. That is how bad it is around Mountbellew and all that country. Something has to be done because it is causing problems and I ask the Department to look at that.

To go back to Mr. Cashman, we talk about the damage done. Has there been any meeting with the insurance companies? That is where you will know what was claimed or what was not claimed in relation to a deer accident.

No, we have not engaged with the insurance industry thus far.

Would that not be the quick way of finding out how big of a problem it is, rather than asking TII, which does not have a bull's iota?

It is something for us to do in the future but we have not engaged with insurance companies so far. It is a question of local information and local areas. As to what we are working on, there are the co-ordinators on the ground, and I know there have been some efforts in areas to concentrate an effort where there was a big road traffic problem. Mr. Keegan might talk about that one a bit, maybe, but there has been a bit of work done around that.

Is it the national parks service that takes over all responsibilities for deer around the country? Are the witnesses aware, as some of them should be, that there is a huge problem of goats around Kinvara in Galway and there is nothing being done? Is there any team or a SWAT team that goes in to try to solve problems, or is it just licensing the NPWS is doing?

The National Parks and Wildlife Service provides the licensing for deer hunting across the country but it has responsibility for deer in the national parks and in the nature reserves. I am afraid I am not qualified to talk about goats, and it is probably better for us-----

Wild goats.

-----to stick with deer, if that is okay.

We will stick to the deer as much as we can.

In relation to the farm relief services, are these fridges or bases in or are we waiting to know if there is money coming from the Department?

No, they are not in place yet. We hope to have them in in the next-----

So what does a guy who shoots deer do at the moment?

Typically, some hunters will have a fridge themselves or whatever or they will take it directly to the factory, either in Clane or other parts of the country.

Can small abattoirs look after them?

I will defer to the Department on who can take in venison. Typically, anyone can, but there are specialist factories dealing with it at the moment.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service might be able to tell me this. I was baling in a field last year and I saw what looked like a mini deer. I know there are red deer and the Sika deer, but is there another smaller type of deer?

They came into a field and they were not fit to jump out of it, which was unusual.

There is.

They are like small runts of things.

Up in the Deputy's part of the world, there are fallow deer. Depending on the time of the year, there could be juveniles, so-----

No, these are not juveniles.

They are small; they are the calves. Then, in some areas, there are muntjac deer, which were released by-----

Where did they come from?

They were released by people unknown. Depending on the time, at this time of year, we will see-----

Does the NPWS classify them as an invasive species or anything like that? Is anything like that done, no?

The likes of muntjac are covered under the open seasons order but there is a 12-month season on them. A lot of the time, when we follow up to check up on our reports on muntjac, if we look at the seasonality, it ends up invariably being a juvenile deer of an other species, such as fallow, sika or whatever.

Okay. One last thing needs to be clarified for the sake of the committee.

I am sorry, Chairman. I have to go to a vote in the Dáil Chamber. Will we be continuing?

Yes.

I have a good few questions.

Deputy Fitzmaurice has the floor. Once he is finished, we are going to suspend for the vote.

I will say one quick thing for the sake of the committee. A statement was made earlier that the EU had banned Brazilian beef. If anyone had read what it has done, they would know it has stated that it is on the critical list. It is actually dangerous, and I would hope that the Irish Government would ban it. The EU said it is giving them now until December to get their house in order. That needs to be clarified rather than something incorrect being said in here.

I thank the Deputy. We will suspend the meeting. A vote has been called in the Dáil Chamber after which we will continue the meeting.

I thank the witnesses for being here. We have a desperate and monumental problem with deer in Kerry. They have us completely overrun. On road safety, the number of accidents is not recorded properly but there have been people killed as a result of deer, there is no doubt about that. Many the young fella's car is broken and they are only after getting insurance. They are paying thousands of euro for insurance and they have a car in flitters and no insurance to cover it. Road safety and health are the real things that must be addressed one way or another. For farmers, then, their grass is eaten. Their fences are broken, trampled, and they cannot keep them up. They are responsible then if their cattle cause a crash after coming out on the road through a fence that is broken by deer because they have ear tags on them.

On TB, Dr. Barrett said only 2% of deer that were tested presented with TB. Is that 2% of the ones that were tested or the total number of deer that were shot?

It is 2% of those tested.

How many were tested?

I cannot tell the Deputy off the top of my head, but it is in the hundreds, not in the thousands. It is a relatively low figure. We test what is submitted to us in the regional veterinary labs. We would welcome more submissions and we make this available to hunters and landowners. The plucks can be submitted and we will test them. Of what is submitted to us, that is what we get.

Would they be from the one area?

That is from all over the country.

I am very disappointed at the full amount of the ones that were tested. That is the like fella that went delivering the telegram down home and he asked how far more had he to go. It was actually my two uncles he asked. They said, "Well, where are you going?" The man with the telegram said, "Mind your own business, only have I far more to go?" We do not know what the percentage is of. I am kind of disappointed about that. Sika deer are classified as vermin now by the European Union. Does Dr. Barrett know that?

Yes.

Does that make any difference to strategies the Department has in place?

The NPWS might answer the one on the sika deer first, from the point of view of categorisation and what that means from a Government policy point of view.

Looking at not just the sika deer but also the fallow deer as well, from a species point of view, even though it is not native to Ireland, fallow deer will never be added to an EU list because it is native to some parts of Europe. Sika deer have been listed as an invasive species of national concern in the EU, including Ireland as well. Both fallow deer and sika deer are of national concern to Ireland. Even within the context of that, it is taken within the whole of the deer management strategy.

The Farm Relief Services Co-Op might answer how it is spending the €3.6 million. Is it paying fellas to shoot deer?

We are not paying people to shoot deer. We are employing the people on the ground each year. That €3.6 million is over four years. That is employing the people on the ground and putting all the systems in place and so on.

Is that systems to shoot them or what?

No, to track more so.

That is not important part at all. The important part for the farmers we are representing down in Kerry is to cull the deer and get them out. It does not matter how many of them are there. They will have to be culled, and that means shot. This deer management strategy should have a different title. It is to cull the sika deer that are not native to here.

We are very fond of the red deer and we would be very hurt if anybody shot the red deer, whether stags or does or whatever, as we appreciate those, but the sika deer must be got rid of. We must put road safety first and have no excuses.

What about farmers' viability? I think of the likes of Tim Herlihy in Rathmore who had 30 animals go down before Christmas. Every deer that has been shot, whether by him or those he was paying to help him, when its throat was cut it had lesions. To prove that, he had two of them taken to Cork to be tested and they were rotten with TB. That should be proof enough for anyone. That man adored his cows and adored his heifers and most of them were taken away in a lorry. His neighbour had 66 and 61 of them went down so the whole lot went. Now there is another neighbour with 33 gone down and the vet says it is a new outbreak. Donal Murphy, a widely-respected vet, says he knows from the type of TB it is that it is a new outbreak, so there are deer and badgers causing these men to lose their livelihoods. This is very serious. There are two aspects, which are lives on the road and farmers' livelihoods. I do not know how people can be told to buy venison when it has not been tested for TB. Why are we testing the cattle at all if you can eat deer with TB?

Thank you, Deputy.

Maybe the witnesses will say something about that.

Very briefly, because we have gone over time.

Chairman, just to briefly answer the Deputy, Farm Relief Services are 50 years supporting farmers and that is why we are interested in getting involved in this. As for testing, TB will obviously need to be tested for at the factory level when venison is going into the food chain. That is obviously going to be critical. I live at the foot of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in Deputy Aird's constituency and every day on the way to work I pass deer on the road. We understand the challenge, which is a massive one, as was said earlier.

Thank you. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae.

Thank you very much, Chairman. I warmly welcome the deer management strategy group and indeed many of my friends from Coillte, the Department of forestry, FRS, the NPWS and all the witnesses who are here as we are all trying to achieve the same thing, which is reduce the amount of deer roaming, because the figures have exploded. I thank the Minister, Deputy Heydon, for his involvement to date. When people talk about strategy, of course you have to have a strategy and to know what you are doing. You have to have a plan and know how you are going to go about tackling a problem. The refrigerated units were something I was very supportive of in every way, and it is the same with the Minister. Those units are going to be very important to the work that is being carried out. On the issuing of the section 29 and section 42 licences, I thank the NPWS very much for its proactive and workmanlike way of dealing with those, which is very much appreciated. Of course, we need more people. We need more hunters on the ground. We need for it to be financially sensible for them to go out. It is a sport for many people but sport can be expensive. It needs to be financially sensible for individuals to be out.

On the work FRS is doing, Mr. Keane and others know I am very supportive of that. I always have been and always will be. I appreciate it is a very difficult problem. When FRS staff are going around the farmers want them to be out there and to cull the deer, but the whole operation is not as easy as deciding to go out and shoot them all. That is what we want to do as we want to reduce the numbers but you can be very simplistic and point the finger at the witnesses and say they are failing. That is not true, as they are working at it, but we just want it to accelerate it.

It is true we have an awful problem in County Kerry. There has been an explosion in the population of not just sika deer but red deer, which also need to be culled. The NPWS is very accommodating when farmers come along saying we have a problem. Whether it is red or sika deer the NPWS understands the difficulties and we appreciate that, especially with the national park in Killarney. The numbers have exploded and that is why we have so many accidents on our roads and so many farmers being affected. A farmer can put up a new fence and see it becoming destroyed after a couple of weeks simply because of deer jumping it. This simplistic view that you can fence them in or out is rubbish. Pointing the finger at Coillte, the Department of forestry or at anybody is not helpful in this situation. Every one of us, be that Coillte, the Department, private landowners or the NPWS, all want to achieve the same thing.

Coming back to the TB issue, every one of the witnesses knows the Minister is very serious about reducing the TB problem we have throughout our cattle herd nationally, which itself is very serious. The reports we received that formulated the Minister's policy on TB did not actually show deer were a big problem but on the ground we know they are. Take places like south Kerry where deer were not very prevalent at all. They started to come in and as soon as the deer came in the incidence of TB started to rise. The problem is whether we proved it scientifically. We did not, simply because there was not enough testing. There is not enough testing going on but wherever testing is carried out there are an awful lot of instances of TB. The statistics do not back us up because we are not doing enough testing. There has to be a big focus put on the eradication of the female deer because that is the key to this problem. Since I heard it being discussed here, no more than a person would know a cow from a bullock or a bull, any person who has a gun licence and owns a rifle will know a female from a male deer. There is no problem in the world in that distinction. We rely on these people. I hope there will be a strong emphasis put on tackling the problem.

Coming in here, the one thing I wanted to say, Chairman, is it is not us against the witnesses or anything like that. We are representing the same people they want to help and what we want to achieve is a much reduced deer population because it has gone out of control. We all have to work together. How you will tackle any job and how you will do it right is not trying to blame anybody or criticise anybody but just to say we all have a job of work to do and we are all going to pull together and do it. I am supportive of the witnesses and thank them for the work they are doing. I do not envy FRS in that it is a difficult job. I thank its representatives for the fact it goes around and has meetings with farmers and everything. That can be very difficult because farmers are hurting. You know well, Chairman, that if you set new grass and of a morning you see 30 or 40 deer in that field, you would be cross enough if it was five neighbouring cows, never mind 40 deer where you cannot give out to the person who owns them. I thank the witnesses for the work they are doing. I am very supportive of it. I was, I am and I always will be.

I thank all the witnesses. I have listened to a lot of the contributions. It is certainly a problem in my area, which is the opposite side of the Slieve Bloom Mountains to Deputy Aird. I was driving home last night after a meeting in Carlow and I encountered 12 deer on a couple of kilometres of road. I am aware it is a black spot for deer but unfortunately these black spots are becoming more and more prevalent. If I look at my 10 km of road from Kinnitty to Birr, where once there was one spot you would see deer there are now eight or ten. There are no civil works, signage or fencing that is going to address that.

However, there is a growing frustration out there that it is not being dealt with fast enough. The witnesses referenced the number of killings on an annual basis. It can vary significantly county by county. I think they mentioned that 79,000 had been killed. What would they say is an optimal target in relation to the annual culling of deer?

I would go to back to what I mentioned earlier. We cannot really target a number because we do not know what the overall number in the country is as such.

What if it was based on resources?

That is a very difficult one to answer. What we are trying to do is build an infrastructure to control deer and reduce the impacts they are having. That is what this whole project is about. To arrive at a number is virtually impossible. I cannot answer that question definitively. Does Mr. Keegan wish to comment?

As Mr. Cashman said, we are trying to put the structures in place to make this more efficient. What happened in the past was that hunters were kind of doing their own thing with whatever landowner they were working with. That was very successful in some cases but not in others. We are trying to put the structures and recording system in place along with a tagging system and an app. We have the tags here if anybody wants to see them. It is to try to get a better end-to-end system where we know where and when the deer was shot and all the rest right up into the factory. As Deputy Healy-Rae said, it is a very tricky thing to do. It is a brand new approach. It has never been done before on a national scale.

If we are still killing 75,000-odd deer in five years' time, will it be sufficient?

The best way I can answer that is to say that structured deer management has been in the UK for many years - decades really - and they are still struggling in a lot of areas. We cannot just say that we will kill X amount and that is it, we are done. It requires a sustained approach. We cannot just kill a certain amount and walk away finished. It is and will be an ongoing thing. If we want it to be successful, it has to be an ongoing thing over many years.

To develop that further, what we want to see in the mid-to-long term is a reduction in impacts, be they road traffic incidents or impacts on protected habitats and forestry. I alluded to the national forest inventory and the impacts that we had seen in our five-year assessment. If we see reduced impacts, that will guide us on whether we are shooting enough deer. For example, people in the Deputy's constituency might say that they are not seeing as many issues as before. That will really be the guiding factor.

We are not expecting deer to learn the rules of the road. Depopulation will be the answer as far as I see it.

If I may touch on testing and times of testing, is the current sample adequate or does it need to go further? A number of a few hundred was mentioned, but we do not a have a definitive figure.

Is that in the context of TB testing?

Yes.

Will the Deputy clarify his question?

If we look at the testing that is being carried out at the moment, we are talking 200 or 300 and we have no definitive figure. How much does a test cost and how long is the turnaround time? I am just trying to get a sense of whether we should be doing more.

The tests are over €50 each and they take ten to 12 weeks to culture. Mycobacterium bovis is a slow-growing culture. The real issue is that the number of submissions is low. We would have the capacity to culture more if more plucks were submitted, but they are not being submitted.

Does Dr. Barrett see any particular reason for that?

With submissions, people are motivated when TB is suspected. If the suspicion is not there, the motivation will not be there. We have to remember that TB is one of several reasons to manage the deer population. Focusing solely on it is not the right thing to do. We need to look at why we need to manage deer in the broader context.

A number of people have claimed to me that where disruption has occurred as a result of new infrastructure, it can lead to deer transitioning to new areas and being seen in areas where they were never seen before. I just wanted to make that point.

On licence renewals, the whole area of section 42 permits, one shooter, one farm and so on, are any modifications required?

I do not understand the question.

In relation to the whole area of licence renewals and section 42 obligations, is there any need for modifications?

We recently brought the whole system online and reviewed the whole process from start to finish to try to streamline it and gather all of the information up front. We have done a certain amount of work on that. It only went live last week, so it is very early days yet.

I would like to expand on that a small bit for the Deputy. From the start of this programme, there was an issue around section 42 permits and the standardisation of procedure. It was much easier to get one in Wicklow than in the rest of the country and many hunters expressed a lot of dismay about that in the last few years. To be fair to the NPWS, it has moved heaven and earth to get this thing streamlined and uniform across the country, so there has been quite a bit progress in the last two years in this particular area, which has been well acknowledged by those in the hunting community. It was one of the asks that has been delivered on.

The voting bell is running, with five or six minutes of it gone. We will suspend the meeting and return after the vote, which will leave us approximately 15 minutes to go through any other questions.

I thank all the witnesses for their attendance. I have a few questions. I apologise if they have been touched on already but I was attending another committee meeting. I note from both the reports and witnesses' replies earlier that, essentially, we do not have a fully comprehensive way to monitor the population of deer within the country.

However, it would seem that we have seen a massive increase in the past five to six years, maybe as a result of Covid when fewer people were culling. Do the witnesses have any thoughts on that?

In terms of controlling the population, looking at encouraging the hunting of small, low-value female deer was mentioned. What measures are the witnesses looking at in terms of that encouragement? Where are we with the delivery of that part of the proposal?

I noted that, quite interestingly, 68% of stakeholders at the initial forum back in 2021 or 2022 mentioned that public opinion was a constraint in dealing with the deer population. How does the group plan on addressing potential public backlash against increased culling? As much as I hate to say it, it is very much a rural issue and one where we see a big difference between rural opinion and urban opinion. For those who are dealing with them, they are a pest on agricultural land. They are causing more accidents on roadways. The Cathaoirleach and, I believe, Mr. Cashman touched on the N22 and the bypass of Macroom. I am from that area as well, so I am very much aware of a massive increase in the incidence of deer jumping out on the road - not just on the bypass, but on parts of the N22 generally, both east and west of Macroom. How do we deal with that in terms of public opinion when the report has foreseen that public opinion could be a massive barrier to dealing with this?

May I also get an update as to where we are in terms of the establishment of the deer management agency and where the budget is going to come from for that? We currently have collaboration between the NPWS, the Department of agriculture and Coillte, but what will that procedure look like for the deer management agency in reality?

May we get some further information in relation to the hazard that deer pose to biosecurity? Obviously, they are mentioned a lot when it comes to TB. There is uncertainty as regards the extent of the role they play there. I appreciate that other members have mentioned it, but how do we deal with that? Are there any other biosecurity concerns related to the massive increase in the deer population that we are seeing across the country?

I thank the Senator. I will deal with a couple of those questions and hand over a couple, if that is okay.

The public opinion question is quite an interesting one to address. The biggest problem we have with deer is that they have no natural predator in this country. There are no other means of dealing with them without reducing the population. An example that I often give relates to the Phoenix Park in Dublin, where there is a natural population of deer that has been there for centuries at this stage. They are controlled every year to a certain level and that maintains the population. It does not just reduce or increase the population; it is maintained at a certain level that is healthy for the population of deer. There is intervention for that to happen, however. What we are trying to do as part of this is roll the idea out across the country that we can maintain a population of deer at a level that is sustainable for the deer. There are places in the country where there are too many deer for their own good. There is a lack of food for deer because the population is too high in areas where they are seriously grazing. From a public opinion point of view, the point we would put across is that we are trying to maintain a sustainable deer population nationwide. That is the focus here. It is nothing else. It is not extermination or elimination. None of those words is being used. It is sustainable population of deer. That is an important point to make.

On the other point the Senator made about taking out female and young deer, there is an incentive scheme being developed for that. It is not finalised completely yet, but the idea is that we would incentivise the taking out of female and young deer. However, there needs to be a structure put in place around that from the point of view of reporting and verification. That is being worked on at the moment. Once that is developed properly, there is a good chance that we will be able to roll out a scheme like that. However, we need to be sure that if taxpayers' money is being put into something, there is a means of being able to verify what is happening for that money. That is a responsibility that we have as a Government agency or subagency. That is an important point.

The other question was on the national agency for deer, which is contained in recommendations. That has not been developed a whole lot yet. It is one of the long-term objectives. It is something we will have to look at into the future from the point of view of finding some place for the storing of information, national policy and that kind of thing. We are starting by getting something done and getting infrastructure on the ground, but there will have to be more negotiations within Government bodies to see how we can advance an agency and what that might look like. There is a good bit more discussion to be done around that.

I do not know if there was any other issue raised, but one matter we might return to from the questions that were asked earlier is that of testing. That was not one of the Senator's questions, but Mr. Keegan might come in on standardised testing.

All deer that are sold into game-handling establishments go through a system. If someone wants to sell deer to a game-handling establishment, they must sign a trained hunter declaration form. On that trained hunter declaration form, while no hunter is a veterinarian and is not qualified in veterinary medicine, they are asked to submit details of any abnormalities that they find on the carcase at the time of culling, whether that be a suspected TB lesion or whatever the case may be. They deer are then inspected by Department of agriculture vets and are randomly sampled for TB, so it is not true to say that they are not tested, as such. There is a bit of testing going on through the factories.

I am sorry. I did not say they were not testing.

No, I know the Senator did not, but it had been spoken about earlier. We are actively encouraging hunters and farmers on the ground who wish to partake in the programme to submit plucks to their local district veterinary offices, DVOs, for testing because without the evidence, we obviously cannot act on it.

The Senator had a question about biosecurity. Does anyone from the NPWS want to talk about biosecurity? Are there any issues that they feel are important there?

I can take that one. The Senator is probably concerned about spillover from the deer into cattle. We have looked at a couple of different diseases, including viral diseases such as Schmallenberg virus and bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD, that were surveyed a couple years ago. The levels of BVD in particular were minuscule in the deer population.

To follow on from a point that was made, there may be an idea here that all the infection is going from deer to cattle. It is actually going both ways. There may be spillover from cattle to deer and spill-back from deer to cattle. Mr. Cashman mentioned the scenario in the Phoenix Park. There was a problem with TB in deer in the Phoenix Park and the resolution of that problem was to stop raising cattle in the Phoenix Park.

Before we do a quick second round, I have one or two questions. Mr. Keegan mostly answered the question I had about the testing, but when we spoke about the renewal of the licence, he referred to asking about how many the person had shot in the previous year. Does the organisation ask about how many samples people have sent off or is there a way of encouraging them, when they are doing their renewals, to prompt them to get TB testing done?

We have been given figures for all over the country. The witnesses will not have the information now, but they might be able to send us on a breakdown, either by county or by deer management area, of the kinds of figure that would be shot each year split across section 42 permits, section 29 licences, the NPWS and any other ones as well.

I will just answer the first question. We only ask for the number of deer shot, the species and the sex. We do not look for anything else in relation to TB in the current process.

Would it be worth taking the opportunity to prompt hunters to send a pluck?

I am sure it can be considered in the group.

We have ten minutes. There are three people and three minutes quick-fire.

I thank everybody who is here today. I would not envy their task and what they are trying to do. This is something new. Years ago, the people engaged in shooting were doing it for us, unknown to themselves and everybody. There has been an explosion in the deer population. For their own good, there has to be an attempt to reduce the number. They are destroying all of the vegetation in rural and mountainous areas because there are too many and eventually nothing will be left for them. What contingency plans are in place if hunter numbers plateau or decline while the deer population continues to rise? Years ago, everyone I knew had a gun but, as far as I can see, there are now very few people with guns. The three recognised deer organisations opposed extending the male deer season. Why did they disregard the expert advice? What evidence shows that the extension has improved deer management outcomes?

I will take the second question first, if that is okay. There was quite a bit of discussion in an open forum on the deer hunting season with stakeholders, which those organisations also attended.

I am only asking the question.

The decision taken was that the hunting season would be extended, in line with the hunting season in Northern Ireland. They would be made uniform. That is what we did. We made the system uniform with Northern Ireland. Ms Crowley might add to that, but that is basically it. That is what we did.

That is grand. That answers my question.

That was agreed at an open meeting and that is what was said. That is what was done.