Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We had a long discussion about feral cats in the Dáil because they are an issue. Cats are an unusual animal in that they are semi-domesticated in many ways. They become a protected animal if they are owned by a person but, essentially, for the purposes of the Bill they are considered a wild animal if they are not owned. On many farmyards one has cats living in the yard who are essentially protected animals because they are owned by someone but they behave in a pretty wild manner in terms of ratting and such behaviour.

We cannot treat feral cats as protected animals because we are then going down a road whereby we would be unable to control and implement the regulations because there are no owners to prosecute, take to court or to whom we could issue a welfare notice. We must be sensible and we must do a lot of other things to deal with the feral cat population such as catching, neutering and releasing. That is already the case in work done by many animal welfare organisations. We must do more such work and perhaps help to financially support the programme. We are encouraging that through our code of practice, that we are requiring of all the animal welfare bodies that we financially support. However, one cannot apply the same level of protection to a wild animal as a protected animal because it is so difficult to enforce. Whereas there is an onus on landowners in terms of wild animals and protected animals to be mindful of said protection when laying poison, we are somewhat limited in what we can do for wild animals because they are far less predictable.

In terms of the laying of poison, it is necessary that a notice or notices of the laying of poison upon the land shall be so that at least one notice is clearly visible from every public place adjoining or being upon the land. In other words, one has to be able to see the notice regardless of the way one enters the land. The notice must be up on a gate or otherwise visible. It is not necessarily limited to one notice. If there are multiple entrances or access points to land my understanding is that they must all be clearly marked.