Danny Healy-Rae: Kerry's Deer Crisis Threatens Lives & Farms

Thank you very much, Chairman. First of all, I want to thank you all for being here, but we have a desperate, a monumental problem with deer in Kerry. They were completely overrun. Road safety, the amount of accidents, I don't think they're recorded properly, but there have been people killed as a result of deer. There's no doubt about that. Many of the young fellows' car is broke, and they only have to get insurance, paying thousands of euros for insurance, and their car then flitters, and no insurance to cover it. So, road safety and health is the real thing that must be addressed, one way or another. Farmers then, they have grass to eat. Their fences are broke, trampled, and they can't keep up fences, and they're responsible then if their cattle come out on the road, because they'll be attacked on them, and they're responsible if their cars are crashed after coming out on the road with fences broken down by deer. TB, you see, and I want to ask you, Damien Barrett, you say that's 2% of deers that were tested only present with TB. Now, is that 2% of the amount of the ones he tested, or the total amount of deer that were shot? It's 2% of those tested. So how many did he test? I can't tell you that off the top of my head, but it's in the hundreds, not in the thousands. It's a relatively low figure. We test what's submitted to us in the regional veterinary labs. We welcome more submissions, but we make this available to hunters and landowners that the plucks are available for submission, and we will test them. But that's of what's submitted to us, that's what we get. And would they be from the one area? But that's from all over the country. Well, I'm very disappointed at the full amount of the ones he tested. That's like the fellow that went delivering the telegram down the road, and he asked, see how far more had he to go? There were actually my two uncles, he asked, had he far more to go? And they said, well, where are you going? And the man with the telegram said, mind your own business, only have I far more to go. We don't know what the percentage is of, so I'm kind of disappointed about that. We do know that CKD are classified as vermin by the European Union, we know that, do we? Does that make any difference to the strategies that they have in place now? We might answer the one on the CKD first, maybe in PWS from the point of view of categorisation, what that means from a government policy point of view. I suppose, well, looking at not just the CKD, but also the fellow deer as well, I suppose, just looking at it from a species point of view, a fellow deer, even though it's not native to Ireland, it would never be added to an EU list because it is native to some parts of Europe. So we, and CKD then, have been listed as an invasive species of national concern, yes, in the EU, including Ireland as well. So I suppose, so both of them, both fellow deer and CKD would be of national concern to Ireland, but even within the context of that, it's taken within the whole of the deer management strategy. All right, so the family, how are they spending the 3.6 million? Are they paying fellows to shoot deer? No, we're not paying people to shoot deer, we're employing the people on the ground each year, so that 3.6 million is over four years, so that's employing the people on the ground and putting all the systems in place, etc. Systems like to go shoot deer? No, to track more than... Look, Chairman, I don't think that that's the important part at all. The important part for the farmers that we're representing down in Kerry is to call the deer and get out of them, and it doesn't matter what amount of them are there, they will have to be called, and that means shot. And this deer management strategy, it should have a different title, it's to call the deer, seek a deer that are not native deer. We actually are very fond of the red deer, and we'd be very hot if anyone shot the red deer, stags or does or whatever, we appreciate those, but the seeking deer must be got rid of. Road safety first, no excuses. Farmers' viability and the fact that the likes of Tim Hurley and Ralph Moore, he went down with over 30 animals there before Christmas, and every deer that has been shot, he has fellows paying him himself to help him to shoot the deer, and every one of them, they know when they cut their throats that they have lesions. And to prove that, he has two of them taken up to test them, and they're rotten with TB, and that should be proof enough for anyone. That man adored his cows and adored his heifers, and the very most of them were taken away in a lorry, and his neighbor had 66, and 61 of them went down, so the whole lot went. And now there's another neighbor, 33 gone down, and the vet says there's a new outbreak. Doran Murphy, a widely respected vet, he says he knows from the type of TB it is that there's a new outbreak. So there's deers and badgers causing these men maybe to lose their livelihoods. This is very serious. First, there's two things, lives on the road and the farmers' livelihoods, and I don't know how we can tell people to buy venison when it hasn't been tested for TB. Why are we testing the cattle at all? If we can eat deer with TB, what's the purpose of testing cows and testing cattle and everything? So just maybe, would they say something about that? Chairman, just to briefly answer Deputy, we're, Farm and Relief Services are 50 years supporting farmers, so you know what I mean, and this is why we're interested in getting involved in this, from testing TB. TB will obviously need to be tested at the factory level for venison going into the food chain. That's obviously going to be critical. So I live at the foot of the sleeve of Bloom Mountain in Deputy Aird's constituency, and every day on the way to work I see a passed deer on the road. So look, we understand the challenge, it's a massive challenge, as you said earlier. Thank you.