Professor Simon More:

I thank the Deputy for the question. To my knowledge, there has been no work done on that matter but perhaps there should be. Over the years, questions have been asked as to whether disturbances, including road-building or the cutting down of forestry, creates risks. Often, people find that such disturbances occur alongside or shortly before breakdowns. That is a different issue to the one referred to in the Deputy's question and based on empirical evidence, we do not know the answer. However, based on first principles, if forestry encourages deer to increase in density and increases the opportunity for aggregation with infected species, then that would of course be an area of potential concern in terms of shifting from this spillover to maintenance host. However, we have no empirical evidence-----