Mr. Michael Sheahan:

I agree with the Deputy. I could not believe what I was seeing either. I have never seen anything like that in my life, and I have not met anyone since who has ever seen anything like it.

Like the Deputy, I could not believe in 2024, or never mind in 2024, I could not believe at any time that somebody would do that. The crux of his question is how was this happening in the shed next door and how did we not know about it. The reality is we did not know about it, unfortunately. Within the slaughter plant, the horses come in during the morning. The horses that they send to the slaughter plant tend to be in good condition. They do not send dying, starving, lame horses to the slaughter plant. Whatever is happening next door, the standard of horse that arrives on the Wednesday morning and later in the day into the lairage that is under our control is good and they are in good condition. In normal circumstances with cattle or sheep, we never go and look at where the animal originated from. We do not go to the feed lot that the cattle come from. We work on the basis that if there are problems, they will show up in the slaughter plant.

Sometimes, we get a load of pigs in to a plant and their condition is not as good as it should be and it will sometimes ring an alarm bell and we will contact our office in that area and suggest staff go and have a look. Nothing like that was happening in this case because the horses coming into the plant, despite the horrors that were happening in the shed next door, were generally in good condition. That was not ringing an alarm bell. If another slaughter plant was to open up, it goes without saying given that we now know it is potentially a risk when horses are being assembled for slaughter, we would make a point of having some inspection regime for the places that the horses are before they come to the slaughter plant, whether that is next door or 50 miles away. The view expressed by committee members is that would be desirable if it could be done. As I said earlier, I simply would not have believed what was happening if it had not been for the cameras. I simply would not believe that anybody would do that. There was no reason for it.