Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I am looking for solutions. We are where we are and I am always a believer, irrespective of what happens and whether punishment is required, that we need to get the next step right. If we do not we will end up back here again. As the Chair and everyone said, we need traceability from birth to death. I appreciate there are rogues in every industry and it was rogues that were on the programme. It is not as easy to do it with horses as with other animals. People do not have cattle without a herd number. For example, they might have a pony in the back garden but they will not have a Friesian cow. Everyone who has cattle has a herd number and that system works. It is not as easy as it is for cattle, but I want to see efforts being made to come up with a solution to the problem. At the end of the day, 99.9 % of genuine horse owners have their horses microchipped and the horses have a good life. It is the other 0.1 % that is not chipped that is leaving the whole system open to abuse and unfortunately everyone else suffers.

I will return to the difference between an identity document and a passport. Will Mr. Duggan or Dr. Egan explain the following? HRI is an all-island entity and I thought Horse Sport Ireland was as well with one stud book and so forth. However, the programme stated that a Northern Ireland passport was coming and was beginning to cause problems. From my understanding of the programme, a horse that was registered down here was apparently easily able to get a Northern Ireland passport. I did not know there was such a thing because I thought we were one island for equine purposes.