Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I salute Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan. I am sure it is poignant for her that she is following in the footsteps of Tony Gregory, who moved a similar Bill a shocking 23 years ago. When we assembled at the press conference the other day there were pictures of Mary Robinson and Michael D. Higgins which date from 40 years ago, including their contributions to the debate on the original Bill in which they call for urgency in dealing with this issue, which Deputy O'Sullivan is now proposing to amend.

There is no difference of opinion. Hare coursing is a brutal, barbarous, wanton cruelty and has no part in a modern society. I call this a "fact" and I can back this up. In the last Dáil we brought in legislation on animal health and welfare. Guidelines were put in place which did not go far enough but, in fairness to the then Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, they went dramatically further than anything we had before. We specifically put in an exclusion for hare coursing, acknowledging that the activity was cruel but removing the hare from the protection of that Act, showing that the House accepted its cruelty but was prepared to let it go on. That is not good enough.

I found the contribution of the Fianna Fáil Deputy astounding. He repeated generalities but there is no hysteria on this side. We are responding to facts and to information given, not by a third party, but by people who attend coursing meetings, including vets, National Parks and Wildlife Service officers and some of the people who are in the Visitors Gallery and who regularly monitor the activities.

What goes on at these events? There is a little hare, weighing six to eight pounds. The first step on his journey is to be netted in a process where club members go out in the countryside, set up nets, and scream and frighten the hares to put them into the nets, from where they are taken and put into a box. They are solitary, quiet, timid creatures but they are kept in captivity and they are not used to that. The stress they feel has been scientifically evaluated by vets. They are trained to run from dogs, released onto the course and yelled at by club members. I challenge anybody to look at the pictures of a greyhound, with his muscles clenched, ten or 20 times the size of a hare, going for that hare. When this was debated in the House 23 years ago my former constituency colleague, Trevor Sargent, played a tape recording of a hare screaming and crying and I was going to do the same today but could not because it was horrendous.

This is not ignorance, it is an absolute fact. The people who assemble in a field for this are generally men but their numbers are dwindling. People can cod themselves all they like that this is a natural, rustic pursuit in which mammy, daddy, Ben and Jane go out together on a Sunday afternoon but they do not. It is generally supported by males and it is abhorrent that people stand around and cheer the massacre of another creature. They may not be caught by the teeth of a greyhound but they can be with claws and when in a state of fear and so on.

A sport is a challenge of equals and willing participants but we cannot call this a sport. It is ridiculous that this is under the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Do people think that those who filled the Visitors Gallery yesterday fighting for the arts would think it is a good idea that hare coursing is covered by the same Minister? It is ridiculous.

Other Deputies said we needed to do this because the hares would run riot all around the country if we did not control them but that is also absolute rubbish. In the UK and Northern Ireland, when this barbarism was banned, it was made clear there was no need to control numbers. Hares are a biodiversity action plan species in Northern Ireland and the UK, which means they are among the most threatened mammals and require conservation action in Ireland. Habitat loss, human expansion, land management changes and persecution have resulted in the Irish hare population being in serious decline across the country and there are no hares left on our own doorstep on Dublin's North Bull Island. It is not true to say the population is multiplying.

Let us be clear: this is not a tradition. At least, it is certainly not an Irish tradition. This barbaric pursuit was planted here by the English aristocracy, something with which I would have thought the great nationalists in Fianna Fáil might have had a problem. It is a cruel spectacle for their lordships, the first rules of which were drawn up under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I by the Duke of Norfolk. Even if it was an Irish tradition, it used to be an Italian tradition to go down to the Colosseum on a Friday night to watch people being eaten by lions. It used to be a tradition to display people in freak shows but society moves on and civilisation takes note of what needs to be done. It is not acceptable to cling to outdated ideology in order to support what is recognised as cruelty.

A report commissioned by the British Government shortly before it voted to ban hunting stated that they were satisfied that being pursued, caught and killed by dogs in coursing seriously compromises the welfare of hares. The so-called regulations and measures to protect the hare are just not good enough. Freedom of information documents clinically reveal the abuses that take place in our coursing season each year. In Clonmel, over three days of coursing, it was claimed that of 188 hares in captivity, not one hare was struck. This is simply not the case as it could not possibly be true. Over 7,000 hares were taken last year but only 17 of the 75 official events were monitored. People cannot say with great authority that everything is great because their officers have not been at events to monitor what has been going on. I do not have time to read other testimonies from east Donegal and my own constituency where, sadly, Balbriggan is the only place in Dublin where there are coursing events. There were reports of two hares requiring assistance, with one dying, but veterinary reports stated something different and that experience is repeated across different counties. The post-mortems carried out on those hares show clear evidence of cruelty and trauma.

Why do we have to do this? What is to be gained from it? There are humane alternatives to live coursing. Drag coursing, using a mechanical lure, would eliminate this cruelty once and for all. As Deputy O'Sullivan said, there would no longer be a need to muzzle the greyhounds, which is itself cruel. There would no longer be a need to take hares from their natural environment to be terrorised and baited. Wildlife rangers would no longer be obliged to attend meetings and keep an eye on the behaviour of coursing clubs so they might now have time to deal with activities such as hare lurching.

Somebody said there was a spike in criminals bagging hares in England after it was banned. Do people think the hare cares whether he is taken up by a lord in a pair of jodhpurs or a young fellow from a council estate? It does not make any difference - cruelty is cruelty. If we prohibited this activity officers would have time to do the job they are supposed to do and there would no longer be a conflict between the clubs and animal welfare activists. A switch to drag coursing could actually give a dramatic boost to coursing clubs as those who consciously stay away on account of the barbarism might actually decide to go along for a day out. This is a very viable alternative.

This is not a rural-urban divide. There are many people all over rural communities who find this utterly abhorrent. The idea that dealing with this now will drive it underground is laughable. There are many activities that went on years ago but are now banned and they do not take place nowadays. Other people say there will be an impact on local economies but all the sponsors have withdrawn from these activities. If there was money to be made and this was still popular they would not have done that. Numbers are dwindling and crowds are down.

This is a relic of a barbarous type of activity in which most people in Ireland, no matter where they live, want no part but yet again the political establishment lags behind the consciousness of people. We have a chance to deal with this next Thursday and I urge Deputies to break the Whip and do so.

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