Mr. Niall Ó Donnchú:

I see. Deer are wild animals which will roam. Our responsibility extends to the wild animals within the national park. We take our animal husbandry role as seriously as we take public safety issues. Anybody who approaches a stag, particularly a rutting stag, is asking for trouble and they should not do so. The Deputy will be well aware that we have erected signs to that effect. If there is a technological solution, we will look certainly at it. We are looking at a variety of technology interventions in the area of fire prevention, to which I will return, and habitat and species management. For the Deputy's information, we are working in a partnership with the Canadian authorities' administration of its national parks and we will ask it to share any technological solutions they might have.

We are very mindful of the dangers on the road. I know the N72 very well. It is a dangerous and narrow road that is built across some of the most scenic countryside in the country. People need to exercise due care while travelling on the road. We work with Kerry County Council on signage and speed calming and so on. We will continue in our dialogue with Kerry County Council, the local chamber of commerce and others on raising awareness of the dangers of speeding or driving with undue care on the road. We are conscious also of the numbers of foreign visitors who may not be used to driving on the left side of the road. We will continue to address these public safety issues.

The roads within the national park are shared facilities and cyclists and walkers need to use them on that basis. The Deputy will be aware that we have invested significantly in the roads in the park. I acknowledge that the Deputy brings issues to our attention. We are very grateful for his local knowledge in that respect. I am not sure if the Mangerton Road is an accommodation road but I will examine the issue on the basis of the information the Deputy provided. I doubt the potholes are of the size described because they would be craters. We will certainly look at that issue and if we can find the wherewithal within our budget, we will seek to address it as best we can. It must be borne in mind that we have relatively limited resources, which we try to use to best effect especially in the public facing parts of the infrastructure. We will, however, take a look at Mangerton Road.

The burning was very regrettable. To be clear, the area involved was 175 acres, not thousands of acres. There are firebreaks within the park. These fires are wildfires for a reason. The direction in which they move depends on prevailing conditions. At the time, the ground was extremely dry in Killarney. It was a tinderbox. Ironically, what arrested the spread of the fire were the efforts of our park colleagues, the fire brigade and the rhododendron because the rhododendron was fresh growth. I say this without any hint of irony. That is just a fact. Every time there is a fire, we learn from it and invest in firebreaks based on the direction in which fires might move. We recently deployed drone technology in Wicklow as a prevention measure and as a detection and fire management measure. It was extremely useful because it was the weekend of an orange fire alert. We will look to this technology. The key message is awareness. We are still trying to determine how the fire in Killarney started. It could have caused by a cigarette that was disposed of carelessly or a barbecue. We are currently investigating that. We do not allow the lighting of fires in national parks for a very good reason. It is very hard to police every hectare in an area of 87,000 ha., nor can we legislate for a lack of cop-on and common sense. This is how we address the awareness issue.

On the extension of burning into March, the Deputy contributed to the lengthy debate on the Heritage Act. The analysis conducted by the National Parks and Wildlife Service involved an analysis of meteorological data from every station in the country. Based on this analysis, the advice given to the Minister was that rainfall in the six months of the open season for burning was significantly lower than the 30-year mean rainfall. This applied across the country, including Kerry and I am very familiar with rainfall in the county. The analysis conducted by our regional teams indicated that in the circumstances there was no justification this year for opening the pilot scheme that is allowed under the Heritage Act. The Minister accepted that advice. At the end of February, there were a significant number of wildfires in Wicklow and the Air Corps had to be called out to help quell them. The fires caused a significant amount of damage. This fed into the decision because it showed, as the Minister stated in the press release, that the extension of the season would not be wise in circumstances where ground conditions were extremely dry. Our meteorological data from each of the stations showed that ground conditions were so dry that it was not advisable to extend the burning season into March last. I accept that the weather changed in March but that was after the burning season in any case and farmers had the previous six months in which to burn.

The Heritage Act aligns the hedge-cutting regime with the road safety regime. That is a very important change in that the road safety regime takes primacy. In his contributions to the debate on the Bill, Deputy Healy-Rae made that point very well. The provision in the Act addresses that long-standing anomaly, which needed to be addressed. It also provides for the extension of the hedge-cutting season into August by allowing the trimming of a season's growth on the road-facing side of a hedge. This is a welcome measure under a two-year pilot. We are working on the regulations around that, which will be published for consultation quite soon. I hope I have addressed the Deputy's questions. I am not sure if I left anything out.