Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if any complaints were made to his Department in 2011 and 2012 in relation to non-compliance with the highest standards of traceability and standards in the slaughter of horses in licenced slaughter houses; if so the number of such complaints and their nature; the action taken by his Department to deal with these complaints; the irregularities found; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7271/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Under EU law, responsibility for compliance with food safety and traceability requirements rests, in the first instance, with food business operators. This is augmented by official controls, applied at different stages in the food supply chain.

My Department implements official controls in regard to horse identification at marts and other sales venues, abattoirs and points of entry to the country. All equines, which include horses, ponies and donkeys, are required to be identified in accordance with EU and national legislation. Equines issued with a passport after 1 July 2009 must have a corresponding microchip implanted by a veterinarian. It is recorded in the passport and creates a link between the passport and the animal. The passport includes information on any veterinary medicines administered to equines. An equine for slaughter for human consumption must be accompanied to the slaughterhouse by its passport, and the information on the passport determines whether the animal can be slaughtered for human consumption. Horses treated with certain veterinary medicines such as phenylbutazone, known in the industry as "bute", are permanently excluded from the human food chain in order to protect human health, and the passport of the horse in question is endorsed by the prescribing veterinary practitioner to this effect.

My Department has detailed procedures for the slaughter of horses in abattoirs under its supervision and has communicated these and the checks required both to its staff and the business operators. It has liaised with passport-issuing agencies in Ireland and has developed protocols to allow abattoir operators to check the details of passports with these agencies to seek to ensure that they are valid and that only those horses eligible for slaughter are slaughtered. Where forged or tampered passports accompanying horses to slaughter are detected, it is the policy that such animals are destroyed and removed from the food chain.

I can confirm that my Department has received a small number of complaints in this area. While the Department does not comment on ongoing investigations, appropriate corrective action is taken if non-compliance is detected. I can advise that during 2011-12 my Department issued two compliance notices to horse slaughter plants; the approval of one slaughter plant was temporarily suspended and the approval of another was voluntarily suspended. The approval of one organisation, the Irish Cob Society, to maintain a stud book and issue horse passports was revoked last autumn.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

Ongoing vigilance is maintained regarding official controls in this area. In that connection, the European Communities (Equine) (Amendment) Regulations, S.I. No. 371/2012,introduced recently, provide for the updating of S.I. No. 357/2011, European Communities (Equine) Regulations 2011, to strengthen the powers of the Minister relating to approval of an issuing body for equine passports, authorised officers and prosecutions relating to equine identification. My Department is developing a central database of horses which will involve migration of selected data from passport-issuing organisations to the Department. The database will be populated with information provided from the databases maintained by the passport-issuing organisations; by the Department from records obtained from sources such as slaughter plants and knackeries; and by local authority veterinary inspectors in respect of records maintained at appropriate slaughter plants.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It took the Minister a long time to come to the point. The question asked if complaints had been made and what action had been taken. The Minister might give further information about how many complaints have been made, when they were made and what action was taken. Was the suspension of one of the organisations from issuing passports related to the issue of traceability of horsemeat or were there other reasons? Regarding the two factories that are no longer allowed to slaughter, will the Minister give an outline of the broad reasons for that and whether it was related to traceability? Can the Minister further confirm that he is 100% satisfied there is no possibility of microchips and passports not matching? Even where they are matching, I am told that the microchips can be bought quite easily and it is easy enough to ensure the passport is amended to match the microchip. Is the Minister absolutely satisfied that the system dealing with horsemeat for the food chain is as secure as that for cattle or sheep?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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They are fair questions. First, with regard to the removal of the issuing agency, there are about seven bodies that can issue equine passports in Ireland. They are in different areas, such as sports horses and warmbloods. Horse Sport Ireland is the main one along with Weatherbys, but there are others in specialist areas. We removed the Irish Cob Society from that approved list because the Department was not happy that the procedures we expect of those organisations would be followed. We are making changes in this area at present because concerns have been expressed and there is anecdotal evidence that passports for horses are too freely available. We now require all the agencies to provide all their data to a centralised database to which the Department will have access, to ensure we know exactly who is issuing what and to whom. That is necessary.

Can I be 100% sure that no horse has a false passport? No, I cannot be 100% sure of that. However, we are putting as many checks in place as possible and if anybody has any evidence of horses with false passports we will follow up on it immediately. When concerns have been expressed, we have followed up on them. In the last two years I have done that personally with my veterinarians. Most recently, when the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals made a series of statements which resulted in understandable concern, on the following day I asked one of my advisers to meet the individual concerned, Mr. Stephen Philpott.

The special investigations unit of my Department has subsequently followed the matter up with Mr. Philpott to establish if he has any proof to back up his accusations. We are determined to ensure that the abandonment of a great many horses by people who can no longer afford to keep them as a result of the recession does not result in any fraudulent or criminal activity. If people have evidence that concerns them, I ask that they bring it forward and we will investigate.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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The microchip and passports arrangement was introduced in 2009 but there are a great many horses in the system which predate that year. When horses are brought to slaughter, is every carcass checked for the presence of bute to ensure that no carcass containing that substance, which is very dangerous to humans, gets into the food chain? Does the Minister propose to introduce a centralised system as exists for cattle to issue identification to all equines in the State to ensure there is no fudging or uncertainty? The public would like to be absolutely reassured, not only because of the horsemeat scandal but so that all horses can be tracked and identified. As the Minister said, there are a great many issues around horses.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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It is important to separate the issues of the horsemeat scandal we are currently investigating and the question of whether we have appropriate checks in place to ensure that any horse slaughtered for human consumption has a valid passport and microchip. There is no evidence at the moment to suggest that there is any connection between horses that have been slaughtered in Ireland and the finding of horsemeat in Irish meat products. Nevertheless, the Deputy's question on what we are doing to ensure that horses are slaughtered properly, professionally and have appropriate passports and microchips is a perfectly valid one. Horses that do not have passports and microchips and which were not required to have them before 2009 cannot enter the food chain under the current rules. We carry out checks on a random basis in factories where we test meat for the presence of bute. We have asked local authorities to increase checks for bute in the facilities supervised by them and we have increased checks in facilities supervised by the Department for the very reasons outlined by Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív.

Only two factories continue to slaughter horses in Ireland as a number of factories decided to move away from that business. The boning hall which had been boning out horses has ceased to do so in recent weeks. Both slaughter houses which continue to slaughter horses have been under local authority supervision but the Department is taking over their supervision now. The larger exporting factories involved in the slaughter of horses had been supervised by the Department in the same way that beef factories were, while smaller operations were under local authority supervision. I am now insisting that all slaughtering of horses is directly under my Department's supervision. That will mean a permanent veterinary presence, which is required to be there anyway, for all horses being slaughtered. Obviously, the necessary checks and balances must be in place to ensure that no horse which lacks proper identification and paperwork enters the human food chain.