Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Regulation of Sale and Supply of Pets and Animal Welfare: Discussion

Photo of Paul DalyPaul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. As the Chair said earlier, we need to seek clarification on the numbers of unregistered horses that have been mentioned because I would question that. There may be confusion between the categorisation of thoroughbred, non-thoroughbred or whatever. Thoroughbred foals that will be registered eventually do not have to be registered until 31 December of the year of their birth. There is good reason for that. The insertion of a microchip in a very young foal may hinder or stop that foal from suckling its mother. Unless these figures can be massaged to reflect a time of year when many foals have not yet been registered, I would seriously question the numbers that have been mentioned here today. We will seek clarification on that matter.

In their submissions and contributions, our guests have talked about the online passport. Their submission referred to the concept of an online passport. I would like further clarification as to where Horse Care Ireland is on this matter. Has it done any worthwhile, thorough research on the possibilities? Has it had any communication with the powers that be, including the Department, that might progress the implementation of the online passport? Is it an issue on which our guests have done a lot of constructive work or is it, for want of a better word, a kind of pipe dream? While our guests have referenced the other animals on the farm and how it works with traceability, I would point out a difference between cattle, sheep and horses. I am on our guests' side and am playing devil's advocate here. The difference is that nobody would buy a cow as a pet and nobody will put a sulky cart behind a cow. A cow will be born onto a farm and will die there or be sold to another farmer, an abattoir or a meat plant. It cannot be sold again without being registered. However, some horses are not on farms. People use horses for events or use them in different ways to farm animals. While in theory it sounds good, as I said in the earlier session to the representatives from the Dogs Trust, it is easy to police the compliant, the problem is with the non-compliant. The people who are not registering the horses now will still not comply with an online passport system. A horse, of any category, must end its life somewhere. If people are selling horses without a passport, that means people are buying horses with a passport. Those are the real offenders and that is the root of our problem when it comes to untraceability and the issues we have within the horse community.

The debate over the past couple of minutes seems to have gone down an alley I did not foresee, that is, the exclusion of horse carcasses from the human food chain. I do not see the relevance of that at all. If we are solving the issue of unregistered and unlicensed horses, we cannot allow them into the food chain because other than identification, the main purpose of registering a horse through the horse licence is the recording of any veterinary medicines that are applied or administered to that horse during its life. They all have to be recorded on the licence and if we do not have that record, we do not know what we are allowing into the food chain. I am not of the opinion that opening up the inclusion of horse carcasses to the food chain will in any way be a solution to the problems we have with horse cruelty and the lack of registration of horses.

I do not know how we ended up going down that avenue and I am at a loss trying to follow that train of thought. Will Mr. Collins elaborate on that? Has work been done on the online passport or is it just a concept or an idea at this stage?

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