Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Practically all of the 4,500 seizures made last year were in urban settings, either towns or cities. For example, on the north side of Cork city at the end of November, 83 horses on public lands were seized. Quite a number of these horses had to be put down because of welfare concerns. We rehomed 42 of those horses through a voluntary organisation. Most of them were rehomed in the UK. Some of the horses went back to the owners when they could show they had the horses microchipped, passported and an equine-registered premises willing to take them.

The Garda, departmental vets and Cork City Council were involved in this case. That type of approach has been replicated across the country where local authorities have been proactive and helpful in most cases.

I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív that we cannot simply confiscate all horses from Traveller communities, for example, or other urban-based communities that cannot afford to keep animals. If the animal’s welfare is compromised, we will intervene and seize the animal. We also have an obligation from the social point of view to examine expanding programmes for young people connected with horses but who live in an urban environment and who may benefit from learning horsemanship. In the meantime, until we have those programmes in place, we will intervene on welfare grounds and be pretty uncompromising in doing so, as we have an obligation in this regard. Some of the welfare stories about horses on urban lands are just horrific and we will simply not tolerate it. On the social issue outlined by the Deputy, I am very supportive of the development of urban-horse programmes. In the past few days I have spoken to a local councillor based on the outskirts of Dublin on this very issue.

We will try to follow up on that but we have limited financial resources in our Department to be able to do anything extensive in that area.