Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is not an area we can go into here regarding case law and so on but I would be surprised if there were no cases. I am rewinding my head in terms of what you would see coming before the courts and cases that stand out where somebody would be prohibited from keeping animals forever. That is not appropriate in every case but someone with a conviction three years and a day or a month ago could be running one of these plants for three years and could also be the animal welfare officer. I know Mr. Gleeson would flag this for Government and the Oireachtas but there is one area we need to flag up and that is animal rights. A recommendation from this committee will do that. Never mind the fact that the animal cruelty is the awful part of it, this has financial implications for the State. We have a very important meat industry that everybody is working very hard to protect. I know it involves horses but when the word goes out, it is across the world's media, including the European media, and we all know the damage that can do. We saw it with the damage done to the beef industry and China. It took a long time to get that industry going again. The Department put a lot of work into it. We have done very well on the farm sector and generally it works very well but the State has had its eye off the horse industry and this should make us sit up. I think the Department should flag this. I do not want to prejudge what the committee will come up with but I would imagine that it and the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine would have a recommendation on that.