Paraic Brady (Fine Gael)

I thank the witnesses for attending. I am a pet owner. I have two working dogs at home that stay in the house with the family. I know what it is like to have a property broken into because it happened to me. Thankfully, the dogs were not taken but other property was taken. As my colleagues have said, any time your property, your home or your security is breached in any way, it has a lasting effect forever on your mental awareness to know that somebody has been in your private space.

My colleagues noted that the Department of agriculture has strict rules when it comes to livestock. We are now at the stage where there is a database of the DNA of cattle so that when a calf is born, its DNA is taken and the Department can tell the sire, the mother and so on. The rules regarding the ownership of a dog are very simple. It should come down to a couple of things. People should purchase a dog from a recognised agency, which is registered as the owner of the dog. There are many dogs sold on the black market, as everybody knows. People advertise them on Facebook, DoneDeal and everywhere else. Nobody knows where the dog was sourced, where it comes from, for example, a puppy farm, and whether it is chipped or not chipped.

Until that regulation is tightened up, there will be numerous problems regarding chipping.

I know all about chipping. I am involved in the horse industry. It is similar with a dog. When a chip is tampered with and removed from a dog, we can see that the chip has been removed because the hair grows back a little differently and is whiter or a greyer colour. Any good vet will be able to tell that the chip has been removed from a dog. However, tattooing of the ear is very simple. It only takes a small bit of dye in the ear and it will have a barcode with the date of birth of the dog. It cannot be removed. It is a tattoo, so it is there forever. It cuts out the theft of dogs completely. It has to cut it out because the tattoo is there forever.

These tattoos are relatively easy to put on a dog. They are a friendly but also safe way to identify them. Some of these dogs are worth thousands, for example, cockapoos, or we can go back to the Yorkshire terrier and other breeds. If people have dogs of that value, for their own security, they have to look at doing something outside of microchipping. I think tattooing is the only way we will stop theft. Unless people were to cut the ear off the dog and leave it without value, it is a security code that cannot be broken. We need to look at that going forward. If someone buys a dog, as well as a microchip, they should have a tattoo. That will cut out the theft of dogs, the black market and the money involved. That is where I stand.

The witnesses might be able to answer one question. What percentage of dogs that are reported stolen are returned? The market for some of these valuable dogs in Europe and England is huge. It is unfortunate that when we go to some of these fairs in the countryside, we see dogs being sold out of the back of vans, and so on. There has to be some law whereby, if people cannot prove where the dogs came from, they should be lifted. Until we get tough on that, this will be a recurring issue. Regulation is one thing. If we get stringent with the protocols on the registration of dogs, microchipping and tattooing, it would cut out a lot of the black market. Then, where anything is found to be stolen and people are caught, there should a stiff penalty and, certainly, they should never own an animal again. That needs to be put out there.

I thank the witnesses for their time. We had a discussion with the Department of agriculture forum regarding sheep worrying and concerns about dogs running off the leash in the hills. Everybody is responsible for their pet, let us be quite clear on that. We are talking about a cohort of people who love pets and treat them as family members. I have a sister who has no children but has a pet, and he is treated like one of her own. Everybody knows how attached people get. The legislation needs to be changed, but we also need to look at educating people as to where we purchase our animals and what source they come from. That would certainly help.