Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Minister of State that no stone will be left unturned, as we have been here before. There have been similar revelations in the past, yet the situation continued. There is an industry that is politically influential and powerful. Every time I raise the matter with the Minister, he spends his time talking about how great the industry is and so on. It is why we give it almost €100 million per year. What flows from trying to make profit out of animals without proper regulation, for example, the enforcement of the rule that people have to take care of their animals after it races, is the situation of some owners who, having already made money out of their horses, want to make a few hundred extra euro by having them killed for human consumption instead of paying the €200 to get the animal euthanised where they are.

The Minister of State said that the welfare of equines was protected by legislation and appropriate enforcement action was taken where breaches or shortcomings were identified. If so, why did it take an "RTÉ Investigates" programme to reveal this? How come RTÉ has to say 20,000 horses are going missing every year for this issue to be highlighted? The programme for Government refers to prioritising equine welfare based on a robust traceability system. We know now that there is no robust traceability system. Many horses appear to have two microchips and two passports so that they can be passed of as something they are not. We also know now that this situation was highlighted to the Department of agriculture in 2018. A veterinary inspector raised concerns on 13 March 2018 after he scanned the carcasses of seven horses at a slaughterhouse and found that six of them contained two microchips. Why has this situation not been dealt with previously? Why do we not have a practice whereby any horse involved in showjumping or horse racing automatically has its passport stamped as not being fit for human consumption because, 99 times out of 100, they will have had bute used on them? These are very serious questions to answer and I do not believe we have had those answers from the Minister yet.

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