Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is very interesting. If no one had intelligence and we were the first to discover it, it is extraordinary that it was happening on a pan-European basis. There were a whole lot of malfunctions within the system, yet no one had heard about it even as a possibility. I am sure the Minister would love to have that level of confidentiality at the Cabinet. It is extraordinary that this practice was so widespread, yet nobody knew it was happening.

We must let the enforcement authorities take action to determine whether anyone has broken the law. I accept that it is hugely difficult, but enforcement authorities should go after everyone who can be prosecuted. I accept that this will require the painstaking collection of evidence and the compiling of complex case files. I also accept that there will be a great deal of blame-shifting. One can see it all the time. Various players are trying to shift the blame and say they did not know what was or was not happening. I do not want to prejudice any investigation that the Garda Síochána may be undertaking by casting doubt on what anyone has said, lest that be used to undermine a prosecution. However, it appears that in our society, people involved in illegal activities will provide any excuse and always place the onus of proving they are wrong on the authorities. One of the difficulties the Minister and investigating authorities face is the inability of people to acknowledge that they knew what was happening and that they did wrong. The Minister, the Garda and any other investigating agency will have my full support in any investigation and prosecution they undertake. I hope the matter will be pursued and that no soft attitude will be adopted.

I am not happy about another aspect of the situation, which is the control of the slaughter of horses in the State. I have asked on a good few occasions what complaints have been made in the last year about the control and issuing of passports and microchips and, in general, the slaughter of horses. It has become a major issue since the number of horses going for slaughter grew by a factor of six to a very significant number. I understand the number of horses slaughtered has grown from approximately 4,000 to approximately 24,000.

One of the reasons I have called for an independent investigation is a particular worry. The story broke on 14 January 2013. I tabled two parliamentary questions immediately after the story broke. Allowing four days for a parliamentary question to be dealt with, my questions were answered on 23 January 2013. The reference numbers were 3210/13 and 3211/13. The first question was to ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the steps he had taken to address the illegal horse meat trade, and the second was to ask the Minister the measures he had taken to address concerns over the use of fake passports in the horse meat trade. If one did not understand the system, one would have thought from the Minister's replies that we had fantastic controls on the slaughter of horses. The replies referred to EU legislation introduced in 2009 and relevant legislation on microchips. One would have thought our system was foolproof. It is amazing that, not two months later, after the issue has been pursued and it has become untenable to defend the castle, we admit that the system is riddled with holes.

It was totally open to abuse and was not fit for purpose. The Minister said he was introducing immediate reforms to centralise the issuing of passports for horses and to make it similar to the cattle movement monitoring system. The Minister still got it wrong because the issuing of passports for thoroughbred breeds - for example, dams and sires of particular breeds such as Connemara ponies - can be dealt with by the breed societies. The issuing of identification for horses should be done not through online registration but directly, in a manner similar to what happens with cattle. If societies want to keep a record of progeny, that is a different issue. It has nothing to do with the unique identifier or-----

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