Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome other speakers. I agree that the sport horse is a huge part of cultural and social identity right across rural Ireland. We are very proud of this, and this committee, in particular, takes it very seriously. While we will deal with the bones of the strategy and the issues the organisation is facing, this is a great chance to address something I have addressed several times with officials of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine when they were before us, namely, the registration of horses. I raised with them the case of a local horse owner, Mr. Finnian McLoughlin. He and his partner are young, progressive breeders, the types of people we should have. Two years ago, they got to the final in the loose jumping in the RDS. It is a three-year old competition. This is something to take very seriously. Mr. McLoughlin contacted the Department in 2020 and advised it that, at that time, 19 horses were registered in his name. When he had gone through the breakdown, he noted one of the horses had never been owned by him, four had been exported, nine had been sold, two had died, and two that had been exported had died abroad.

I never got a satisfactory answer from the Department as to how that can be at a time when we need to have absolute traceability. There seems to be no defence for that. What can Mr. Duggan tell me about that?