Mr. Michael Sheahan:

In 2016, it was brought in that horse owners had to have the equivalent of a herd number, a premises registration number, and 29,000 people now have that. A passport cannot be obtained unless the individual has a proper premises registration number. This was another tightening of the screw. Despite all these efforts, people are still finding ways of beating the system. As I mentioned earlier on, the reason that there is an incentive to beat the system with horses is because of this thing of horses being marked out of the food chain. We do not have that in cattle, but it is there in horses. This creates an incentive for a criminal to try to find ways to beat the system and get that horse back into the food chain and increase its value.