Incidents involving deer on Irish roads have been rising since 2019, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has said, with insurance claims for deer-related crashes also increasing.The topic of deer management has been aired at several meetings of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food in recent weeks. The RSA’s director of research, Michael Rowland, told committee members on May 20th about efforts to establish the prevalence of deer-related incidents on Irish roads.Rowland said there were 41 casualty collisions involving deer between 2019 and 2025. These are incidents that resulted in a serious or minor injury that were caused by a collision involving deer or by trying to avoid them. The more common deer-related incidents on Irish roads are material damage collisions, in which no injury occurs. In the same seven-year period, 1,382 of these collisions were recorded. That figure represents less than 1 per cent of all material damage collisions recorded in that time. These numbers have been increasing year-on-year, from 122 material damage collisions involving deer in 2019 to 262 in 2025. Rowland suggested it could be consistent with an increase in the deer population. No census has been taken, and deer population estimates are very broad, making it difficult to track an increase with any certainty. At another meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food, the chair of Ireland’s Deer Management Strategy Group Teddy Cashman said he was told four years ago that there were 600,000 deer in Ireland, “plus or minus 200,000”. He added that numbers “increased dramatically over the Covid period because there was very little hunting done”. Speaking alongside Rowland on May 20th, Sean Kelleher, chief underwriting officer of FBD Insurance, which is Ireland’s largest farm insurer, told the committee that the company had recorded 466 deer-related insurance claims since 2020. The majority of these claims were for “accidental damage”, and average compensation was around €6,000. Echoing the RSA’s findings, Kelleher said claim volumes have increased in recent years, though they peaked at 99 claims in 2024. Some 33 claims have been recorded in 2026 up to May 20th, but claims and road incidents involving deer tend to spike around deer rutting season towards the end of the year.The highest volumes of deer-related claims are concentrated in a handful of counties. Kerry and Cork account for 153 of the 466 claims since 2020. Galway recorded the highest volume in the west of the country with 44 claims, while Tipperary and Wicklow also recorded a substantial number. [ Deer pressure: I need a licence to cullOpens in new window ]