Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over the last number of years, there have been improvements in the area of animal welfare but we still have a very long way to go in this country. This week alone, anybody who was listening to the radio would have been horrified by the stories of animal abuse and torture. Ireland still holds the reputation of being the puppy farm capital of Europe.

Many of the animal welfare issues we have in this country could be easily addressed if the political will was there. Take, for example, the online sale of pets. The regulations on the online sale and supply of pets are in place for 20 months now and there is yet to be a single enforcement taken by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine - not a single case. This is despite animal welfare organisations spending hours, every single day of the week, having to scan through the online platforms and reporting to the online platforms, and then waiting for the advert to go down, by which time the dog is already sold on and the mobile number is no longer active. These are animal welfare volunteers who are spending their time doing this when they could be doing much more important work.

Instead of taking on board their eminently sensible and cheap proposals, all we are asking the Minister to do is put in place a central database that brings together the information on the dog breeding establishments, where they are located and how many breeding bitches each dog breeding establishment has onsite, and also to bring together the information on the microchip number so it corresponds to the actual dog that the microchip is registered to. We do this for cars, so it is not sophisticated software that is needed. We could do it just as well for dogs and that would allow for pre-verification of the adverts.

Currently, the position of the Government is to tell us to do our homework, to tell the person who is buying the dog to go and do their homework and to tell the online platforms that they have to do better. However, they are not equipped with the tools to it. A central database would allow them to do this. We would also like the Minister to run a public awareness campaign telling people not to pay cash for animals, given the amount of tax that is being forgone by the Exchequer in this multi-million euro industry because we do not inform people why it is so wrong to pay cash for animals.

Yesterday, the programme for the autumn legislative session included the Animal Health and Welfare (Amendment and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 to address fur farming. That is great because we need to ban fur farming. Unfortunately, I asked the Minister without success to extend its scope to take on board the legislation that I have ready to go, which would close down the loophole on smuggling and allow for any animals that are seized at the ports, puppies included, to be rehomed within five days, rather than having to wait for the court process to be completed, which takes anything up to 12 to 18 months.

This House needs to have a debate on animal welfare and it would be an opportune moment now that we have those two pieces of legislation on the legislative programme. I ask the Leader to consider having such a debate.