Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will respond to that point first. The proposal is not to bring legislation but the Department is working on a proposal that is in keeping with the proposed amendment suggested by Senator Gavan and his colleagues. I expect that to reach the Oireachtas in the coming months. That is the information I have but I will delve into it and find more details out because it is something I am interested in.

Senator Higgins put it well when she said it has been a thoughtful discussion on this issue. These issues might not have had the opportunity to share the limelight because the focus has been on shutting it down for years and thought did not go into what happens at the end as much as we would have liked it to. We are at that stage now. Ireland is not the first country to impose a prohibition on fur farming. It has been done in a number of European countries and we have looked to how those countries have dealt with those situations and how they have looked at compensation packages and so forth. I disagree with Senator Lombard and it is not fair to say that my Department is sitting on three farm families. There has been engagement and if that needs to be improved, further engagement will take place. We conducted the independent review and that was at an expense to the taxpayers in this country so we are taking the issue seriously. Across the House it is clear that two weeks of redundancy is not sufficient. I agree with that and I will bring it back to my Department to see what can be done on that. It is clear from across the House that there has not been a satisfactory response on that.

I refer to whether it will be five years or ten years. Ordinarily it is worth saying that usually only an average of three years would be looked at so five years is better than three. I accept that it is not as good as ten years but the Department has not been presented with evidence of this ten-year cycle that has been the foundation for this desire for a ten-year period of time. If that were to be forthcoming maybe the Department could reconsider it.

On demolition versus repurposing, perhaps it depends on the type of building involved. However, if there is potential to repurpose rather than demolish and there is potential to start something new using the existing building, I do not see why we could not look into that. I hope I have addressed all the comments.