Mr. Michael Sheahan:

Yes. As I said, there is no way of providing proof. I can only give examples of the likes of the Ballinasloe fair. When we do checks there, we find the number of horses microchipped and passported is close to 100%. Nobody is turning up in Ballinasloe at the time we have checkpoints without a passport or microchip. As I said, the figures for horses seized by the local authorities, which are often an indication of the scale of the problem, were close to 5,000 as recently as 2013 and 2014. These are stray and abandoned horses, etc.

By 2019 that was down to just over 1,000 and last year it was down to under 400. That is not to say the problem is solved; far from it. However, we are in a far better position in terms of the scale of the problem than we were ten years ago.