Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend the "RTÉ Investigates" team for its programme last night. It showed very distressing footage of the brutal ill-treatment of bull calves and awful scenes of calves being dragged around, hit with sticks and kicked. It would be worthwhile to have a debate this week, as others have called for, on animal welfare, live animal transportation and, crucially, the enforcement of standards. The Taoiseach spoke earlier about the existing laws and those who are breaking them, but let us look at enforcement of the law and how best we can ensure that animals are not ill-treated in this appalling way and in what appears, in some cases, to have been a systemic way. Let us have the debate this week and inform the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine investigation.

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