Mr. Paddy Mahon:

Deputy Cahill asked if resources were adequate to deal with this problem. In our view they are not adequate to deal with the overall problem. Our opening statement pointed out that we do not have sufficient professional and technical resources to deal with the increasing number of incidents of horse welfare issues.

On purely financial resources, in figures I mentioned earlier, it is costing between €500 and €1,000 per horse. We recoup some but not all of that from the Department. From a resource point of view we have to supplement this from our own resources through ratepayers etc. Ideally we would like full recoupment for these costs.

There is a new procurement framework in place and we should see some efficiencies there. This is an ongoing issue for local authorities in trying to match resources with expenditure in all our areas and control of horses is a very significant one in some of our local authorities.