Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the two groups for their excellent presentations, which were succinct and very informative and all the better for it. I am somewhat surprised that legislation on animal welfare seems to be deficient with regard to the ISPCA's authority to enter establishments. If possible, we should examine whether an appropriate amendment can be made to incorporate greyhound establishments as being establishments within the meaning of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013. It seems to be a significant lacuna in legislation.

It is important to point out this is significant legislation the sole aim and focus of which is to incorporate the welfare of greyhounds from the cradle to the grave. Much work has gone into the legislation, including by the committee's predecessor and this should be acknowledged. Every Member is aware and awake to the situations that can arise, but we must not tar everybody with the one brush. There are people in all walks of life who may not take appropriate care of animals in the way we would like them to.

It is important that the vast bulk of people involved in the industry as owners, breeders, trainers and everybody else do their very best in this regard. Anybody who does not take appropriate care or who behaves in an inhumane fashion in any form has to be excluded, whether that is from boards or from participation. Deputy Pringle is correct. I thought that this legislation was taking steps along those lines, as outlined by the witnesses.

Head 9 deals with the provision with regard to welfare. Clearly, most groups have indicated that this is not all-encompassing. It is pretty weak, if I was to summarise what many of the witnesses are saying. That can also be related to the level of funding referred to by the ISPCA of €2.4 million versus €60 million, which is a comparison of what the ISPCA and all of the groups involved in the animal welfare industry get to affect the greyhound industry with what the greyhound industry gets. There is a factor of almost six or seven of a difference. Have the witnesses any view on what additional funding might be needed to improve the greyhound welfare? What level of additional funding is required for the enhancement of racing greyhound welfare? The Welfare of Greyhounds (Amendment) Bill 2017 has been published by our colleague, Deputy Tommy Broughan. It is clearly something that has a significant degree of stakeholder interest. Can the witnesses comment upon that?

Some of the witness organisations are members of the greyhound forum already. I think the ISPCA is as well. How does that work and does it need to be strengthened? We have ten or 12 pieces of legislation. Some of that emanated from the witnesses themselves advocated strongly in this regard. What more needs to be done in that regard? Does it need to be strengthened? Does there need to be a statutory format to give the forum more teeth?

With regard to criminal sanctions versus the administrative sanctions, the witnesses are clearly not fans of the administrative sanctions. Where would they wish to see criminal sanctions being imposed? We saw from the Morris report that one of the big problems in the industry is doping. Apart from other welfare areas, is that an area the witnesses believe should be subject to criminal sanction? Where in this Bill can criminal sanctions be introduced to deter people from abandoning animals or doing anything else? Animal abandonment seems to be fairly significant. That seems to be the genesis of the witnesses' plea that numbers would be curtailed. The witnesses were comparing Ireland to Britain in terms of numbers. How could one implement that? It seems that we would be better off working at the welfare end of it rather than having a restriction on numbers.

The Welfare of Greyhounds (Amendment) Bill 2017 is something in which we can implement particular standards, even though they need to be strengthened. Nevertheless, there is a good corpus of legislation dealing with welfare standards and we should acknowledge that. If there is a deficit of welfare in countries in which greyhounds or indeed any animal are being exported to, then we should call a halt to that straight away. That is apparent. As Deputy Cahill said, we cannot have a preconceived notion about this. It has to be established beyond a doubt. Sometimes one might say that a certain country is not an acceptable place. We cannot do that. It cannot be based on anecdotal evidence. It has to be based on very strong empirical evidence for us to do those things. There is no use taking a blunderbuss approach and then living to regret it. We have to be careful to do the right thing for the protection of animal welfare, but we must do so based upon evidence as opposed to hunches or anecdotes.