Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their appearance today. Traceability is something which has been brought up by many witnesses in this committee, and I fully accept the commitment that the witnesses do not support or accept that people should be sending greyhounds to any country where their welfare is below the standards we have here. What sanction is there, or what concrete proposal exists to try to prevent that and ensure that it does not happen? Do the owners of greyhounds have a kennel licence? What system is in place? Is there something that can be taken away from them if it is found that they are in breach of regulations of that nature?

Deputy Penrose mentioned the laboratory in Limerick and how work has been done to improve its capabilities to find proscribed substances. How much has been spent on trying to establish that? Has the laboratory reached that capacity yet?

The integrity of the whole sport is another issue. I looked at the website of the Irish Greyhound Board and it details how it works closely with the British greyhound industry because there is so much cross-over. However, we find that the British greyhound industry was issuing diktats recently to say that dogs coming from Ireland could not be trusted because there were doping issues there. How does that work? The British greyhound industry has its rules of racing, which is a pretty heavy document. Does the Irish greyhound industry have a similar document, and does it come up to the same standards as the British industry?

Integrity is a human responsibility. It is not about the dog but the human beings who are managing the situation. From talking to people involved in greyhound racing, be they breeders or people who work on tracks all over the country, the Irish Greyhound Board has a huge trust problem. That needs to be recognised. There is a problem with the industry in that the people on the ground breeding dogs who want to get on with it and go racing and who have a stake in this industry feel betrayed by Bord na gCon due to many things that have happened in the last number of years. They have no confidence in the present board. That is an issue that the witnesses will have to deal with. While I respect that this is outside the remit of our discussion today, we have been asking for many months what is to be done about Bord na gCon. We were told that these issues should be raised when it came before this committee. I accept that this is outside what we are dealing with here today but at the same time it needs to be said and people need to be called out on it. We need to get answers on this issue, because there is no confidence within the industry in Bord na gCon.

We need to get answers in respect of this. There is no confidence among the Irish greyhound industry in Bord na gCon. The Harold’s Cross situation was just one reflection of that. While that is only a small bit of it, everywhere I go, I hear the same thing, whether it is about the greyhound tracks which are owned, part-owned or part-managed by Bord na gCon, about the maintenance of those tracks, the people who are employed at the tracks, the greyhounds or doping. All I hear is that it is a golden circle and if one is not connected with the well-connected people, then one is out of the circle. That is the feeling on the ground. With all due respect to the witnesses, they need to deal with this. We can legislate all we like and bring in all the rules we want. The view of the majority of the people on the ground is that there is no will from Bord na gCon to implement anything that is fair or proper.