Mr. Niall ? Donnch?:

I thank Deputy O'Sullivan for his comments in regard to our colleagues in the region. We are acutely aware that where we are based – we are in 49 different locations in probably 80 national parks and nature reserves – we are part of the community and there is no protecting nature without community. The access for local communities to those public assets is essential. They are crucial to us. I do not want to go on for too long but they are crucial to us in the context of what we do, from the presentation piece to persuasion, prosecution and the protection of nature.

I will start with the deer and then hand over to colleagues to address designations. Some 14% of the country is designated, as the Deputy would see if we overlaid all of the various designations on one map. My colleague, Ms Carberry, will talk about upcoming designations on the south coast. We hate to ignore Cork. Glengarriff is a fantastic nature reserve.

The Deputy is absolutely right. We have a number of active propositions at the moment throughout the country to become nature reserves and to have that status.

The Deputy referred to the deer issue. We issue around 5,000 deer licences every year. Some 40,000 deer were shot and culled in Wicklow alone last year. When one uses the word "cull" it is very emotive. If I use the words "deer management" it is less emotive. We have active deer management programmes in all of our national parks. We take a significant amount of deer off Killarney, Wicklow Mountains and Glenveagh national parks each year. The Deputy is right that it is challenging. Sika deer are not termed an invasive species. They are not native but they are not termed an invasive species. There are some moves afoot in Europe to do that, however. In the cull in our deer management programmes both Sika and red deer are taken out of the herd. The Deputy is absolutely right that they are destructive to saplings and to native woodlands. We manage that actively. I believe we are now on the third and fourth generation of what kind of fencing and what kinds of exclosures actually work. We have some very successful examples of that throughout the national park network, which we are very happy with. I should have extended an invitation to the committee at the outset to come and see some of this activity on the ground across the network of national parks and the kinds of interventions that are made in very much protecting nature.

Coming back to Deputy Whitmore's point, it is hand to frond combat. It is unremitting. Some of these species are very resilient whether they are four-footed or simply growing there. They are very resilient. I do not know if Deputy O'Sullivan had heard the point I made in relation to Killarney - and I believe that Ms Carberry has the figure for Glenveagh this year. We have cleared entire mountainsides and hillsides of rhododendron in Glenveagh National Park. It is easier to access there. Killarney National Park is tricky. The Killarney park is some 10,000 ha, including the lakes, and we have eliminated rhododendron this year alone from 2,000 ha of that, which is phenomenal.