Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I can see what the Senators are saying. The subsection states: "Nothing in this section prevents the occasional killing by or on behalf of the owner of an individual protected animal that is injured." There is a distinction between that and the subject of 23(2)(b), whereby, essentially, a person comes across an animal that is in a particularly bad way, either injured or diseased and dying. The person would be putting the animal out of suffering. Subsection (4) is essentially about occasional killing or making a decision to put down an animal.

I do not want to allow a farmer to put down a diseased animal to try to hide the fact that there may be a disease outbreak in the herd. If a farmer had an animal with BSE and did not want to declare it, he or she might put it down and bury it. A farmer would be able to put down such an animal and bury it if it broke its leg, and that would be perfectly consistent with regulations. However, it would not be consistent with regulations to put down an animal that had a disease. The issue is trying to make a distinction between an injured animal that is dying and an animal that has a disease. We do not want to put in place a charter for farmers to hide the fact that there is a disease outbreak in a herd. That is the distinction between the two paragraphs.