Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Cuffe. In association with my colleagues on all sides of the House, I welcome this innovative legislation.

As the Bill and the Minister acknowledge, the starting point was the Dog Breeding Establishments Act 2010. The policy objective of the Bill is to provide for the welfare of greyhounds in the greyhound industry, thus complementing the Act. As will be agreed on all sides of the House, the Minister has agreed that the greyhound industry is already well regulated and has a well established system of self-regulation that provides a very useful and valuable starting point.

When one considers the context and history of the Bill, it is instructive to note that views on the controversy that surrounded the introduction of the Dog Breeding Establishments Bill were well aired on both sides of the House. I pay tribute to my colleague on the other side of the House who addressed many of the points raised at the time, with which points many of us were in agreement. This was certainly reflected in the representations and submissions made by the various interested parties.

If ever there was confirmation of the legislative relevance and importance of this House, it is evident in the history of greyhound legislation, starting six months ago with the Dog Breeding Establishments Act and the fallout therefrom. I refer to the consultative environment in which the interested parties – the Irish Coursing Club, Bord na gCon and the Irish Greyhound Owners and Breeders Federation – came together to make submissions to individual Senators and Oireachtas joint committees, a number of whose meetings I attended. The representatives of the bodies will be the first to acknowledge the vital importance of the Seanad in this process. They believed that, had the Bill been dealt with unicamerally by the Dáil, many or all of the points raised to establish the Bill as separate legislation which was logical in the context of the Greyhound Industry Act 1958 would have been lost. This is because the Dáil is undoubtedly a much more adversarial Chamber. Time would not have been allowed to the extent to which it was allowed in this House to tease out and debate all of the various measures proposed.

A representative of the greyhound industry pointed out to me as late as today that anybody who suggested this House was irrelevant should note the Bill provided a perfect example of how bodies affected by legislation passing through the Houses could, from the very beginning, have access to Members of the House and various Oireachtas committees. In the case of this Bill, the relevant bodies were able to put their point across and the Seanad followed on. While the approach may not have been bipartisan and this side of the House may not have been able to vote in favour of every proposal by the other side, owing to procedural difficulties——