Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I know he has had various meetings in recent times but he certainly caused a lot of angst to his Government backbenchers by his lack of interest in all sorts of dialogue until the gun was put to his head, effectively, in the last week or two. All of us are interested in the animal welfare issues. We are asking the House to agree in this section, without any reference to the details of what will come forward in the 1958 amended greyhound Act. We do not know what has happened in the smoke-filled rooms as to the details of what the Minister has in mind to be proposed in the autumn by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We do not know whether the Minister, Deputy Gormley, agrees or disagrees with any proposals being made, if there are any, yet he is asking the House to finish dealing with this Bill without that detail.

I do not know what has been going on in rooms around the House over the past couple of weeks and perhaps the Minister might tell the House what he has agreed but I am certainly not impressed by the fact that he knows exactly what he wants to do. He has had a number of meetings with various stakeholders. I presume he has had a meeting with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We do not have any piece of paper before us today nor any note from the Minister to be read to the House about what agreement he has reached in respect of animal welfare regulations that would be introduced to amend the 1958 Act and yet he expects us to buy a pig in a poke. That is our problem.

In my view, in section 1, the Minister is waving the big stick over the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with regard to the amending of the 1958 greyhound Act. He is asking him to bring in animal welfare regulations and put them on a statutory basis and at the same time he is saying that he gives himself powers for a commencement order on animal welfare to be brought in on 1 January 2011 in the event that he does not reach agreement with the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. We want this to be quite explicit. This is legislation and there are further amendments from Deputy Ciarán Lynch and myself on section 2 which will reflect this. We want to see an exemption, which is what the Minister promised the Fianna Fáil backbenchers. He should not have any difficulty about exempting his own role in animal welfare issues, in respect of this Bill, if he trusts the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to bring in an amendment to the 1958 greyhound Act. That is my point and I ask the Minister to take it on board.

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