Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Like the previous speaker from the Regional Group, I look at this and ask what is broad consensus and how would you define it. We could have broad consensus on anything, but do we have the proof that there actually is broad consensus? We could take a stance on different issues, but at the end of the day we must talk about animal welfare and how animals are treated and protected. If fur farming, which is the focus of this Bill, is to close down, how will the people who currently make a livelihood from it in a licensed way transition out of that area and be compensated?

I have listened to the debate in the Chamber today. This morning there was a debate about pain relief for unborn babies. There was an outcry from certain Deputies that what we were doing was wrong. My God, if people say we cannot give pain relief to children when it comes to the late stage of pregnancies or they say we should not interfere, only for the same people to want the welfare of animals to be the top priority, we need to recalibrate our thinking on all of this.

The Bill will set a precedent that would not be good. If the Minister is to do something about this issue, it needs to be done in an exact and precise way that is limited in the powers it gives to the Minister.

I come from a rural area. Hare coursing and fox hunting have been traditions in many rural areas for years. They are a means to keep wildlife, such as foxes, under control. At the moment, we have 80,000 deer too many in this country. They are running wild around the place. What are we going to do about that? They are jumping out on the roads, hitting cars and whatever. That is endangering life. We need to do something about that.

If we put things in an order of priority, there are a hell of a lot of things we need to do before doing this. I will go back to the point I made initially. We were here this morning talking about pain relief for unborn children who have heartbeats. People do not want to support that but those same people want to support the protection of animals. I agree we need to do that but we need to make sure our priorities are right and we deal with human beings first.

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