Andrew Doyle (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Puppy farms can send animals in the back of vans to England, without a requirement for tagging, identification,or passport. The guesstimate for dogs leaving our ports ranges from 25,000 to 45,000 and the reason it is so wide is that nobody has a clue. There is evidence, although I have not seen it, of establishments with hundreds of bitches kept in unfit conditions and that is what we were trying to regulate. Since 2007 I have been asking the Minister to bring forward legislation to deal with this segment of the sector. There are simple ways of dealing with the issue. We need a commonsense definition of a breeding dog, a bitch. I accept it is much too complicated to define the onset of the ability of the bitch to go in pup by age groups or by breed. Defining in legislation the age of four or six months as the age of breeding is not relevant to certain animals but it is relevant to others. I suggest it should be worded in a manner similar to that of amendment No. 6 which states "have already had one litter in their lifetime.". That means the bitch is definitely a breeding animal. Deputy Carey instances a case of a bitch that has had a litter of pups, five of which are female, when the pups are six months old, the owner has a dog breeding establishment, under this Bill, even if he or she has only one breeding animal. I appeal to the Minister to adopt common sense and support the sensible amendment tabled by Deputy Hogan. We are not trying to paint him into a corner.

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