Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Section 56 concerns the eligibility to race of registered greyhounds. It refers to registration in the Irish greyhound stud book, the holder of which I understand is the Irish Coursing Club. We have the Irish Greyhound Board and the Irish Coursing Club and every time I ask a question about artificial insemination, one seems to blame the other, which is regrettable. I wonder if an efficiency saving could be made by amalgamating the two bodies because they more or less seem to do the same thing. I understand the Irish Coursing Club has a chief executive officer, whose only job is to keep the stud book and oversee two tracks in the North.

The main point I want to make concerns the eligibility to race of greyhounds listed in the Irish stud book. I am concerned about greyhounds that are racing illegally on Irish tracks every week in contravention of the 2014 regulations introduced by Bord na gCon. There is no compliance with the regulations which centre on the issue of artificial insemination or the use of frozen semen. This issue has not been dealt with, despite the fact that the Irish Greyhound Board and the Department received legal advice from the barrister Mr. Ross Aylward in February 2013 to the effect that it was illegal to continue to use frozen semen from dogs that were long dead and insert it into bitches. That is still happening. A cartel is operating within the sector and the issue is not being addressed. Section 56 provides us with an opportunity to deal with it. Is there a willingness within the Department to deal with it once and for all and make sure the 2014 regulations will be upheld? The regulations were introduced following consultation, had the consent of the then Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and were made under section 39 of the 1958 Greyhound Act. The amended artificial insemination of greyhounds regulations were introduced by Bord na gCon in 2014 and came into effect on 1 November of that year. They removed the two year limit on the use of semen for the purposes of artificial insemination following the death of a stud dog, but they did not have retrospective effect.

At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine on 20 October 2015 I had the opportunity to question a member of the board of Bord na gCon, Mr. Colm Gaynor, on the dogs that continued to race illegally. He said the following: "Those dogs have not been brought back into compliance. That is the legal problem. The dogs before 1 November cannot now be brought back into legal compliance, as the Senator puts it, but to be definite, they are registered and are on the stud book." If they are registered and on the stud book, that means that they are on it illegally. That cannot be allowed to continue. This problem is causing friction in the sector and placing enormous obstacles in the way of ordinary people who want to breed and train greyhounds. They cannot compete because the AI issue is just a financial minefield.

Let us say Senator Norris wants to have his greyhound inseminated. He must bring the dog to one of five licensed centres in the country and collect it after it has been inseminated with semen which has been kept in cold storage. I mentioned the case of a dog sired by a dog by the name of Trade Official that had been born in 1992, or 26 years ago.