Mr. Teddy Cashman:

Fair enough. The point I make is that deer are wild animals. People do not like to hear this but what I am told is the deer belong to wherever they are at the time. They are your responsibility if they are on your land. If they are on Coillte’s land, they are Coillte’s responsibility, or parks and wildlife or whatever the case may be.

Deputy Fitzmaurice mentioned the two years and is right that ramping up a programme will take time.

There is no doubt about that.

Some 55,000 deer are shot in Ireland annually at the moment, based on the figures we have available to us. It has gone up from approximately 36,000. These are the returns the registered hunters send back when they apply for their licences the following year. It is a somewhat arbitrary figure but it is the figure we have.