*Photograph: John Mangan
SANTA CLAUS and his trusted twelve reindeer are preparing to visit homes across the world but their relations in the deer family are proving to be “a real issue” in East Clare.
Memorably during his thirty year stint as a county councillor, the late Colm Wiley (FF) in 2007 appealed for Army snipers to help in culling deer in East Clare, “When you look around, there would be 10 or 12 in them in a field and they are fierce domesticated. Ten years ago they weren’t like that, and were up in the hills. Now, there are so many of them, they could start breeding with the sucklers,” he remarked at the time.
Now fifteen years on, his party colleague, Cllr Pat Hayes (FF) though he didn’t go as far as to the call for the army, did insist that action must be taken.
Speaking at a sitting of the Killaloe Municipal District, Cllr Hayes acknowledged that his former colleague gained national attention when he raised the issue. Hayes said East Clare now has “a huge deer population” and added, “It is a continuous and major issue, it has exploded on the periphery of our Municipal District”, notably around the Sliabh Aughty area.
“Several incidents” of stags landing on the windscreens of cars have occurred in the area, Hayes claimed. “I don’t know what we can do, there has to be a cull of deer, while it might not say it’s an issue for us that it’s farming but it is now a road safety issue. It is extremely dangerous this time of year. This Killaloe Municipal District population of deer has moved into the valleys and everywhere, it has become a real issue, I know we can’t put a sign on every road but there needs to be a forum to try incorporate all the bodies, this isn’t going away”.
He urged senior planner Brian McCarthy to flag the matter with the National Parks & Wildlife Service. “We don’t want any major incidents happening because of deer,” Hayes concluded.
At the beginning of the deer breeding season, the Irish Deer Commission advised that dawn and dusk are the times when deer are most active, particularly in high-risk areas such as woodlands and mountains. The advice to drivers is to reduce speed where they see a deer warning sign and stay alert.
The advice to anyone who is involved in a road traffic accident with a deer, or who come across a deer that has been involved in a road traffic accident, is to immediately contact the Gardaí. The Irish Deer Commission operates a humane deer dispatch scheme with 135 trained volunteers assisting agencies and charities who deal with an increasing number of deer vehicle collisions nationally.
