Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin, as a party, has opposed the farming of mink since our 2007 Ard-Fheis. I am pleased that, through this legislation, we are moving with the tide against fur farming, which is already banned in other countries, including Austria, Croatia, the Netherlands, Britain and the Czech Republic.It will also become illegal in Norway from 2025. Others have already pointed out that there are just three active farms in the State that breed and rear mink for the purposes of pelting for the fur industry and each December approximately 80% of those mink are killed, while the 20% that are left are kept as breeding stock.

It is important for people to realise that mink is not native to Ireland. Mink is native to Canada and the United States of America and was introduced as a fur farming animal in many parts of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. I have a background in working in the national park in Killarney and unfortunately that experience showed me the devastation that mink escapes have caused to our biodiversity. It is welcome that at least our ground-nesting birds, waterfowl and fish will no longer have the threat of any more large-scale releases of mink. However, we also need to focus on eradicating the mink that are out there in the wild because it is an invasive species and it does untold damage to our native species.

As others have pointed out, there are issues around those who own the fur farms but I would like to focus more on the workers because of the nature of the industry. It has been a legal industry until now and we are going to make it illegal. While we see that the industry owners are to be compensated, the workers also deserve to know what package will be put in place for them. It is entirely unfair that they will only be eligible for statutory redundancy and I hope the Minister of State will be able to outline how that matter can be addressed going forward, perhaps through a retraining scheme. What progress has been made on the issue of statutory redundancy and does the Minister of State foresee anything above that being provided to those workers? Where are we on the request for a retraining fund for staff being put in place? Given the change the workers will experience in their work life as a result of this Bill, it is only right that the Government steps in to provide training for those workers so that they are not left out of work.

Selfishly, I would like to talk about broadening the scope of this Bill, and I welcome the move to broaden it out to allow for miscellaneous provisions because there are plenty of other animal welfare issues that need to be addressed through legislation. I thought the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, would be here but it is the Minister of State. Maybe she can relay this back to him because he is familiar with the issues I am concerned with and I have engaged with him a number of times, both during pre-legislative scrutiny and during the ongoing post-enactment scrutiny of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 at the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

One of the biggest areas of concern has to do with tackling the illegal puppy trade and the smuggling of dogs. Despite the provisions of the 2013 Act, the illegal trade and wanton abuse of puppies is still regularly reported in the media. I will be proposing amendments to this Bill that would address some of the legal loopholes in the legislation that were not foreseen when it was drafted. Nobody will disagree with the fact that the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 has seen great improvements in animal welfare but we still have a very long way to go to address all the issues, particularly those around dogs. The amendments I want to put forward will tighten up concerns around the proof of ownership of dogs and give primacy to the microchip. Thus, when one gets a licence it would be mandatory to include the microchip number on that licence. I would also like the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 to align with the Control of Dogs Act 1986, which comes in when an animal is seized due to welfare reasons, whether that is illegal smuggling or just general welfare. The Control of Dogs Act 1986 allows for that animal to be rehomed after five days whereas that is not possible under the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013. That is an oversight from when the legislation was drafted and we need to align those two Acts because authorised officers, such as the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, need to go through lengthy and expensive court processes in order to rehome those animals. The animals are generally seized when they are young pups and they are kept for anything up to 18 months before they can be legally rehomed. This serves to strengthen the illegal puppy farmers because they know this and they use this facility to weaken the charities by trying to defund them through lengthy legal processes. I look forward to debating those amendments with the Minister and I hope he will keep an open mind when considering them. Now that the scope of this Bill has been broadened, it would be useful to take those amendments on board.

I refer to forestry. It is a welcome step to sort the uncontroversial projects from the large-scale conifer plantations. We are all familiar with the failures we have had to date in handling the crisis in the forestry system. Unfortunately, time is not on our side and we need to get the issues within forestry resolved as a matter of urgency if we are to have any hope of meeting the climate targets. Much needs to be done to turn the ship around and it is welcome that improvements are being made but we have to resolve the issues within the system itself. We need to establish a system that is fit for purpose, well-resourced, and that screens out the bad planning applications at the start as opposed to trying to prevent people from objecting to those bad planning applications. We need to screen them. As others have said, we need a system that is compliant with the Aarhus Convention and that does not block people from making objections.

I look forward to engaging during the Committee and Report Stage debates and I ask the Minister of State to take back my comments on my animal welfare amendments. They are well-crafted amendments that I have been working on for the last year and a half with the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers and I would like if the Government would consider facilitating them in this Bill.