Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail)

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 14, line 21, to delete "or a code of practice".

This refers to the codes of practice relating to productive farming, which I mentioned a few minutes ago. The codes are in place at present on a voluntary basis. The difficulty is that when one speaks to a farmer about codes of practice they will say they have been doing this for years, they were reared on a farm and they know how to produce beef, herds of animals and flocks of sheep or lambs. We will not oppose codes of practice. There must be specific codes of practice, particularly for animals such as donkeys and horses, and I am sure this extends to horses and possibly racehorses in addition to pets. The fact that there are existing voluntary codes of practice within the productive agricultural sector would suggest that hopefully they would not become more than that, but if the codes of practice are to be put on a statutory footing it would be important that the Minister consult with the farming organisations before doing that. I am sure that is his intention, to try to arrive at some type of generic agreement on it rather than introducing a statutory code and getting farmers' backs up and making them unduly concerned. The inclusion of the codes of practice in the legislation give them a stronger legal footing which would mean that if one is in non-compliance with a code of practice, one would be in breach of the legislation.