Kerry council to roll out pilot scheme to detect deer on roads in bid to prevent accidents

Irish Examiner

27-06-2025

Authorities are rolling out new technology in Killarney to tackle collisions with 'marauding deer' whose numbers are out of control.
The "deer pilot schemes" are needed in a county which suffers more deer collisions than most, a meeting of Killarney Municipal District was told.
A 'detect and alert' scheme, which has been effective in Austria, is to be rolled out on a trial basis.
'It detects deer, it detects vehicles,' Frank Hartnett, director of roads services with Kerry County Council, said.
A noise deterring deer is emitted when both vehicles and deer are detected — when there is no car passing the deer could continue to cross the road, he said.
The National Parks and Wildlife Service has previously said requests by the council — and by the late south Kerry coroner Terence Casey — to erect fencing in accident prone spots, were unfeasible. A number of fatalities and some serious injuries have been linked to deer in the Killarney area.
There is no national strategy to tackle deer on roads and Mr Hartnett had put forward Killarney for the pilot schemes to the Transport Infrastructure Network, on the grounds of road safety.
In a second scheme, technology used to deter bird strikes in airports is also being rolled out.
The pilot schemes are being operated by Kerry County Council and are in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture and University College Cork, the meeting heard.
If successful, the schemes will be adopted in other counties where there is risk from road collisions with deer.
The deterrent system used in airports is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks, subject to GDPR approval on the R569 Kilgarvan Road off the N22 at a point where deer are known to cross.
The detection and deterrent scheme will be put in place in Ballydowney on the N70 on the outskirts of Killarney, where deer cross from the national park woodland to farmland. Several collisions, including two fatalities in which two women lost their lives, are suspected to have involved collisions with deer at and near Ballydowney.
Cllr John O'Donoghue of Kerry Independent Alliance welcomed the announcement of the technology. He said he was 'sick' of raising accidents involving deer and he had come across how technology had been used elsewhere.
'The problem is not improving. No one is accepting responsibility for the deer," Cllr O'Donoghue said.
This article was funded by the Local Democracy Scheme