Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

I welcome our witnesses and I compliment them, as my colleagues have, on the work they are doing to highlight very important but unfortunate incidences that are happening in our country today.

I recall a joint policing committee meeting in County Cavan some years ago where the dog warden made a presentation to us. Dog wardens have a huge body work to do. A lot of it is about dogs that are nuisances, perhaps being they are being maltreated. In built-up and urban areas, in particular, dogs can be held in somewhat inadequate accommodation, with very large animals in limited space. I am impressed with the body of work that has been outlined. Policing partnership committees are to be established at every local authority level. Maybe some have been established already, but not many. They are replacing the joint policing committees, which in the past comprised local public representatives and representatives of different organisations and statutory agencies. Perhaps the witnesses could pick a few local authorities and make a presentation to them. It could help to get some coverage in local print and broadcast media, which could be important from the point of view of getting information out and making people aware of the extent of this theft.

My colleague Senator Flaherty has mentioned that is important to have engagement with the Department of agriculture. It has responsibility for animal welfare and has a big veterinary service throughout the country covering every part of the State. It would be important to engage with it. Those involved need to be working closely with An Garda Síochána on this issue. There is also a veterinary service attached to each local authority. It may be good for the witnesses to bring their presentation to those entities as well.

I may be wrong but my recollection is that when microchipping regulations were introduced - it must be ten years ago now - there was an information campaign about the obligation. From memory, it had a catchy message that it could not be tolerated if you did not have your dogs microchipped and this helped to create awareness. Maybe as a committee we should emphasise to the powers-that-be the need to rerun that publicity campaign to alert people to their obligations. These regulations have been in place for the past ten years at least.

I am sure the witnesses work closely with some of the dog rescues, including Dogs Trust. Do many of the pets that are stolen end up abandoned? If so, I assume they subsequently end up in rescue centres. Is there any evidence of that?