Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

This is the 12th time I have been in here and asked to vote for a huge amount of money to be handed over to the horse and greyhound racing industry. This year what we are asked to vote for is €100 million, about €20 million to greyhound racing and about €80 million to horse racing. To put that in context, that is close to the total funding for Sport Ireland. It is more than three times the amount of core funding given to the 87 different sports bodies in this country, adding together the GAA, the FAI, Swim Ireland, Athletics Ireland and Special Olympics Ireland. It is a yearly scandal now decades long. This is €100 million to a gambling-fuelling, addiction-fuelling industry. Where does the money go? Does it fund the welfare of horses and greyhounds? Does it fight the scourge of gambling addiction? Does it assure decent pay for workers in the sector? Of course not. The vast majority of this money goes to prize money, public money paid by the State tax-free into the pockets of the wealthy owners. The horse racing owners are a who's who of the richest people in this country. The Department of agriculture itself allows that €75 million of this money, over three quarters, can go into prize money. We do not have to look very far to find some of these owners, in particular greyhound owners. The greyhound racing scandal of 2019 highlighted by the "RTÉ Investigates" programme "Greyhounds: Running for Their Lives" highlighted the fact that 14 sitting Fine Gael TDs formed a syndicate and bought a racing dog, Swift Starlet. Of course, some of the same TDs stood up in the Dáil in 2011, like many here today, speaking about how great this cruel industry is.

Internationally, people are moving to ban greyhound racing - Wales, Scotland, New Zealand. Instead, we are funnelling more and more money into an industry that would not exist without it. Last year I raised the fact that almost 3,000 of the 12,500 racing greyhounds born in 2021 were already dead or unaccounted for just three years later. How high is that number now? A report commissioned by the Minister has said that the welfare of racing greyhounds in Ireland is an "existential issue" for the industry. Of course it is. With dogs dying on the tracks, freezers for dead dogs at every single racetrack across the country, and a quarter of Irish racing greyhounds dead before their third or fourth year, how could ordinary people possibly be happy with it?

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