Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Can I ask Mr. Sheahan a question? Next week if any of us go to the mart and there are horses for sale, we can buy a horse. It is up to us when we change the ownership. If any one of us goes to a mart and buys an animal, it goes into our herd that night - the minute we buy it. Why can I decide that I can do it in three months, four months or six months? Somebody got a phone call about a horse in training saying it had died but that horse showed up two years later. They contacted the Department, the Horse Sport Ireland or the breeder but nobody ever called out or investigates it. The gardaí did not investigate it either. If cattle were missing, the Department would have the gardaí on it, and rightly so. It would have everyone on it. What is the reason there is such leniency with the horse sector?