Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

There is a joint responsibility. Local authorities cannot say that they want all of this to be paid for by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. There is a also responsibility on local authorities, their veterinary officers and their authorised officers to ensure that horses are not abandoned. This is a joint approach. We spent just over €2 million last year supporting local authorities in trying to deal financially with abandoned horses. That money was spread across many different local authorities and that is where the benchmark period of five days came into play. The Control of Horses Act goes back to 1996 and it applies to looking after abandoned horses and so on. This legislation will add to that in respect of the responsibility of owners or keepers of horses, and abandonment. However, if there is an unidentified horse trotting down the street, then the local authority has to respond to that, pick up the animal, take it to a holding point, make a judgment call on its health, its age, its capacity for rehoming or not, whether it is has a micro-chip and whether it is identified. We put a fund together last year to help local authorities to deal with this problem, but it is not just my problem. It is also the problem of the county manager and the vets, so collectively we need to deal with it.

To be honest, I would like to have more money for this issue, but there is a limit to the budget at the moment.