Ms Aideen Yourell:

Deputy Mulherin raised the question of video footage of gruesome scenes of animal abuse posted online. We go to coursing meetings and we film live hares being mauled and battered into the ground. There is nothing we can do to bring those people to book because it is a legal activity. We cannot prosecute anybody because they are allowed to set greyhounds on hares, pin them down and batter and maul them - try to get one's head around that. What will the Legislature do about that? It is quite definitely cruelty to animals by any yardstick, yet it is exempt from prosecution in this day and age.

On the question of blooding animals, for example, a case was prosecuted in Australia in which an Irishman was involved in such an incident with a piglet - the man is now back in Ireland - and he was disqualified in Australia and the UK. The judge hoped he would be disqualified in other countries, but nothing has happened here to him yet, although I understand there may be a disqualification.

A case was taken to court in 1994, and people were given a sentences of six months, but I am not sure whether they served a day of the sentence because I think the case was appealed.