Mr. Conor Dowling:

Yes, absolutely. It is an area that is being looked at in Britain at the moment. They are looking at banning the importation of these dogs. I think that would be a start. Only a couple of months ago, I was contacted by gardaí who intercepted a vehicle containing a couple of dogs with cropped ears that had been imported. We verified that the paperwork was correct. We checked on the places they were going to and they could continue on their merry way then because no offence was being committed with regard to those dogs.

Like I said, we proposed a number of options, one of which would be to ban the importation for a start and possibly look at banning the sale or supply of them. Ultimately, to really stop this being normal and stop people desiring this look, we should over a period of time look at the possibility of making it illegal to possess them, with some sort of amnesty or grandfather clause built into it so that perhaps dogs that are currently cropped and in somebody's possession could be registered as such. If, however, more dogs appear in the future and people cannot provide some sort of registration to demonstrate that these were registered prior to the registration coming in then they could be considered to be guilty of an offence by mere possession.