Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I want to thank the people in County Kerry who are in charge of section 42 licences for always being proactive and diligent about issuing licences. They are not failing in their duty. In his response the Minister of State let the genie out of the bottle because he identified the problem. We should look at the statistics. I am not being critical of the Minister of State, but he boasted that there were 234 deer taken out of Killarney National Park during the season. We were doing that every week in the 1980s. Does the Minister of State understand the problem?

Some 2,000 deer have been culled in national parks throughout the country since 2016. At one time, 200 deer a week were culled when the population was not half of what it is now. The cull is tokenism; it is not a real cull. We need to reduce the number of deer in this country by 70%. That would mean that the remaining deer will go to where they want to be, that is, up in the mountains away from roads and people.

I want to be clear. I have not raised this issue because of the incident to which the Minister of State referred, where a lady was injured by a stag, which I am sorry about. I have called for this cull for the past ten years. The record of the Dáil will show that I have called for this. The only reason there is a token cull is that I have been calling for it so strongly and over such a sustained period of time.

I ask the Minister of State to ensure there is a realistic cull. In County Kerry alone, we have to take out 500 deer per week for the foreseeable future if we are to make any attempt at sending these animals back to the habitat where they should live and want to be. They are being driven down to greener grass because of the numbers. As I said, they are breaking the farmers and putting people's lives in danger. I ask the Minister of State to treat this matter seriously. We are not talking about Bambi; we are talking about people's lives and their property.

See this speech in context