Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy may have let the cat out of the bag. I feel strongly about this and we had a long debate on this issue in the Seanad. This and the valuation of animals, which we will deal with later, were the two areas on which we had the longest discussions. If we were to introduce "reasonable" in Part 3, which is the most important part of the legislation in dealing with animal welfare and the legal responsibility of people who own or look after animals to actually look after their welfare, any time anyone was taken to court they would claim they did everything that was reasonable and refer to an excuse, such as being away for the weekend or not feeling well that day. We do not have that approach to other legislation when it comes to responsibilities whereby people might be required to do everything reasonable to abide by the speed limit - one does everything necessary to abide by the speed limit by not going over the speed limit.

In dealing with farm animals straying there is a need for flexibility for the reasons the Deputy gave earlier of animals straying, somebody knocking down a fence or whatever. On the fundamentals of animal welfare and the principles relating to the prohibition of animal cruelty in the legislation and the responsibility on a person to safeguard the health and welfare of an animal in his or her ownership, we need to have legal clarity rather than deliberately factoring in ambiguity or flexibility. The term "necessary" sends out a strong signal that a person is required to abide by the law in terms of animal welfare as opposed to being encouraged to do everything reasonable.

The Bill specifies that a person should have regard to the animal’s nature, type, species, breed, development and environment, and ensure that all buildings, gates, fences, hedges, boundary walls and other structures used to contain the animal are constructed and maintained in a manner that the animal is not caused injury or unnecessary suffering and so on. Introducing the term "reasonable steps" to that type of requirement would make it almost impossible to secure a conviction for somebody who was cruel either intentionally or unintentionally. It would dramatically undermine the purpose of the legislation which is to put a very clear line in the sand legally such that an animal owner has a responsibility and is required to look after its welfare. That is why a person is required to take all necessary steps to do that. Arguments will be made in a courtroom as to whether necessary steps were taken but there were other factors that meant that even though the person took those necessary steps there was still an animal welfare issue that was outside his or her control. That is the normal legal wrangling that will take place. Stating in the legislation "a person who has in his or her possession or under his or her control a protected animal shall take all reasonable steps" is too weak. It does not send the kind of signal or gives the legal certainty we require. Anybody with a decent barrister would ensure there would never be a conviction.

I understand the Deputy's reasoning in the amendment and many people have made this point. Even when we had this discussion in the Seanad, people accepted that for the previous section we replaced "necessary" with "reasonable", but that in the general animal welfare section, which is really the heart of the Bill, we need to keep the word "necessary" to keep legal certainty.