Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Bill. Any of us who read about or heard the story of the young lad who was mauled a number of weeks ago or heard his young brother could not but be touched by what happened. It is important we send our best wishes to young Alejandro. I hope he recovers.

I come from a rural area and a farming community and have spoken to landowners, farmers and so on. I have seen what has happened with dogs going out at night and destroying and mauling young lambs and sheep. It is, therefore, timely that we address this. There is a fairly simple mechanism to this. I will give the House an example. Licences were mentioned. I work in a post office and regularly fill out dog licence applications. There is a space to put in the microchip number, but that is not conditional on printing the licence. I would say 95% of people who apply for a dog licence do not have a microchip number. That is my experience from doing this at home. There is a mechanism here whereby we will be able to control these animals and to identify who owns them, and then we can address these situations if they happen. I will be quite honest. I did not realise that dogs could not be rehomed following situations such as these. That makes sense rather than having the homes full and their not being able to take in other animals while there are families that would be only too willing to take the animals.

This is a very well drafted Bill. The Government should support it. It is not over-complicated. The quarterly return might be a bit much. It would be very difficult to get people to make-----