Ms Una Jansen:

If we talk about best practice, we could look at an organisation like the British Retired Greyhound Trust. In my opening statement, I mentioned that they received £1.4 million in 2014 in comparison to the Irish Retired Greyhound Trust which received €200,000. There is a massive discrepancy between that, in spite of the fact that the two industries are of a reasonably similar size. One would like to see an increase in funding. We would like to see the establishment of a retired greyhound trust that is far more organised and has rehoming centres and has much more resources available to it. We would like to see more funding for private independent rescue centres around the country that are struggling to deal with the flood of greyhounds coming into them.

On the statistics, between the years 2010 and 2015, some 2,896 greyhounds were surrendered into Irish pounds. Some 2,497 greyhounds were destroyed in Irish dog pounds and 399 greyhounds were homed or collected via the Irish dog pounds. That does not cover the dogs that we know are disappearing. That does not cover dogs that are being DIY euthanised or that are disappearing or being sold on to disreputable people or being sold for export to countries such as Spain, China, Pakistan and so on.

In response to Senator Mulherin's question, Greyhound Rescue Association Ireland, GRAI, does not really engage too much in sharing gruesome images on social media. I cannot honestly say we would have any experience of monitoring how these images would translate into convictions.