This Commencement matter is in the names of Senators Casey and O'Loughlin. How do the Senators propose to share their time?

We will split it. Senator Casey will go first.

The Senators are taking two minutes each.

I welcome the Minister of State and thank my colleague for sharing this Commencement debate with me. It relates to an ongoing challenge facing west Wicklow and my own area of east Wicklow, in the uplands area. The figures speak for themselves. There is tuberculosis, TB, in one in every six herds in Wicklow. Some 4% of herds nationally have TB and have had restrictions placed on them whereas this figure is 18% in Wicklow, four times the national average. Some 5.4% of the cattle herd in Wicklow are reactors. The figure nationally is only 1.8%. These figures come from the Department. As I have said, this is an ongoing issue. Some 16% of the deer population carry TB.

I will quote a farmer in west Wicklow, Tom Stephenson. He has said:

Farmers in this area have been completely abandoned. There is what can only be described as a plague upon us and we have no way of ridding ourselves of this scourge. We can restock time and time again after a lock-up but the same thing just happens again. It’s a heart-breaking way of operating which just can’t continue.

We all know that the number of deer in Wicklow continues to increase. We see them grazing farmers' fields every day. Coming from one of the most scenic areas of Wicklow, where I have the pleasure of walking the mountains, it is quite frightening how close we, as humans, can come to the deer population. The deer will not move even if people come within 1 m or 2 m. In my own valley of Glendalough, we are now feeding deer by hand outside the hotel. This is frightening because it is not a natural occurrence. It is having a severe impact on the lives of farmers and their families. I will now give way to my colleague, Senator O'Loughlin.

I thank Senator Casey for giving us those very stark statistics regarding the impact of deer in Kildare and west Wicklow. As somebody who lives in Kildare, I have ongoing engagement with the Irish Farmers Association branches covering Kildare and west Wicklow. This issue has come up quite a number of times. Only recently, about three weeks ago, there was a consultation meeting on the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, in Kilcullen and farmers from west Wicklow brought up this issue. At a subsequent meeting last week, I asked about one of those farmers and was told that he had lost 25% of his herd to TB the week before because of the overrun of deer in the area. That is absolutely shocking.

I am really concerned that the Government has no long-term plan to protect the lands and livelihoods of those who live in this area and that the deer population will be allowed to remain unsustainable. There is no doubt that the surge in the deer population is impacting on our grasslands and our crops and aiding in the spread of bovine TB. The implementation of the wildlife control programme in Wicklow by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is not to the standard required. The Minister of State committed additional resources in the budget to the wildlife control programme for next year. Will he assure farmers in Kildare and, particularly, west Wicklow that this money will be fully utilised in providing the staff resources necessary to implement a timely and effective wildlife control programme on the ground? This is very important. Senator Casey spoke about deer coming right up to the hotel. There is no doubt that they are encroaching further each year and mixing with cattle, thereby contributing to the level of TB in the herd.

Gabhaim buíochas leis na Seanadóirí. I thank both Senators for raising this really important issue. While the National Parks and Wildlife Service of my Department licenses the hunting of deer and actively manages deer on its property, it does not own the deer population nor is it responsible for cordoning it into specific areas of land. Deer populations are mobile by their nature and have home ranges that are not constrained by land ownership boundaries.

These home ranges are normally defined by physical landscape features such as mountains, lakes, rivers, built-up areas and the availability of suitable habitat within that home range.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service, NPWS, is committed to the active management of the deer species within State-owned national parks and nature reserves, and as part of its regular ongoing management operations, the NPWS carries out regular surveys, censuses and reports on deer on our sites. Where appropriate, and depending on the annual counts, or where it is evident that damage is being caused by deer to habitats, particularly woodland, culls may need to be carried out to ensure that deer populations do not reach levels that would have negative ecological consequences. Such culls are undertaken by NPWS staff.

In summary, I have met with the Irish Deer Commission and other interested parties regarding this issue. I am very keen, as I know the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine is, to see the establishment of a forum to deal with these issues. It is critically important that we understand and appreciate the scale of the challenges that we are facing regarding deer management from a biodiversity point of view, and the spread of disease.

From what the Minister of State said, I feel that he has a grasp of the situation and he understands it. It is good that the licences have been given out and that the Departments are looking at re-establishing the Irish Deer Management Forum. Those actions are important. The Department within which the Minister of State is based must take responsibility for deer when they are associated with a TB problem. I accept that farmers can go so far in terms of licensing and hunting, etc., but when there is a TB problem and it is impacting on the national herd that we hear so much about, it is vital that the Department and the Minister of State step in.

I ask the Minister of State to step in and meet the farmers of Kildare and west Wicklow to discuss this matter. A meeting is needed and I really would appreciate if he would agree to meet IFA representatives for Kildare and west Wicklow.

I agree with Senator Casey. During the summer we spent a bit of time on the Wicklow Mountains after some of the fires with Wesley Atkinson and his team. It is critically important that the deer population is sustainably managed on which I am sure we all agree. This initiative will take hold. The streamlined issuing of licences is critically important and we have issued a significantly larger volume of licences this year so we need to do that.

In terms of meeting IFA representatives from counties Wicklow and Kildare, correspondence has come into our Department on the matter. Certainly, I know that officials will be more than happy to meet.

There is a responsibility from our perspective and that of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in terms of TB. We give a commitment here that this forum is the best place to address these issues. We also give a commitment, and I know this from speaking to my officials, that we want to address the issue because, as I said, it is not just an issue that both Senators have spoken about in terms of TB - it is also an issue for biodiversity because there has been significant damage, particularly to forestry. We have seen the impact in the national parks where deer have caused significant problems when we have tried to regenerate native woodlands in this country. I give a commitment to both Senators that certainly we want to work collaboratively to address the range of issues that we are dealing with in terms of deer management in Ireland.

I thank the Minister of State.

I thank the Senators and the Minister of State.