Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister. I compliment Senator Boylan. We are both on the Joint Oireachtas of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which has put a great deal of work into this Bill. Those of us who are rural farmers probably prioritise the livestock and crop side of things more whereas Senator Boylan has led from the front on dogs and animal welfare. She initiated a number of our hearings, which resulted in a good report that was published in 2022 and is available for anyone to read.

I compliment the Senator on bringing the Bill to this point and the amount of work she has put into it. That said, we need to scrutinise it a little more and take it in conjunction with the interdepartmental group on dogs that the Minister has set up. When the issues we deal with on a daily basis go outside the remit of a single Department, we know how complicated they can become and how many cracks can appear for them to fall through. In this instance, three Departments are involved. As such, I warmly welcome the Minister’s establishment of the interdepartmental group on dogs and I hope that he will have an opportunity during this debate to fill us in on what progress that group has made. It is better that the group’s recommendations marry with the Bill rather than one running ahead of the other before we know all the facts from both sides.

I welcome much of what is in the Senator’s Bill as regards what we see in daily life – dogs in families or in other homes being treated cruelly and needing to be rehomed. One of the main issues when someone who, with the best intentions in the world, lets his or her good nature come to the top and almost instinctively acquires a dog as a pet from a pound in the belief that he or she is doing a good deed is a lack of knowledge of what is being taken on. There needs to be awareness among and education for those who will eventually home dogs about what that entails. We have all seen instances of well-intentioned people falling for an adorable, cuddly, little labrador puppy without thinking of 365 days later when their house may no longer be suitable for a dog that is now the size of a small calf. People need to be made aware that they need to think these things through. As with many issues, education and awareness might not be the silver bullet, but they are certainly a good starting point. This point needs to be incorporated into the Bill and whatever the Minister devises through the interdepartmental group.

The correlation of microchip databases is a major issue. Progress needs to be made on this so that all dogs are microchipped and can be traced back to their owners. We hear of many cases, and see so many posts on Facebook, about families who are desperate over their dogs going missing and not being seen for 24 hours and pleading to get them back. If the dog is impounded as a stray or is found by someone else, there is often no way of making the connection unless people are on what I call the dreaded Facebook or wherever they can see the post. The warden has the dog, the family is grieving at the dog’s loss and, if the warden is not a Facebook fanatic, there is no way for him or her to make the connection unless someone else does so. Until such time as every dog is microchipped and every microchip is accessible on a single database, we will have a problem. This needs to be another starting point.

I have a major issue with the classification of breeds. This has to do with the education and awareness of owners. Some owners can be taken in by the classification of dogs in terms of how dangerous they are and opt instead for a little poodle, whose classification implies it will do no harm to anyone. From an agricultural perspective, though, when it comes to sheep worrying, every dog, little or big, loves a chase. It is in dogs’ nature. Remember the story about the dog chasing the car. It is only when the dog catches the car that it realises it cannot drive. The situation with sheep is no different. When the chase and the excitement start, the little poodle will chase just like a bulldog or Alsatian. That dog is having fun chasing. This is why it is called “sheep worrying”. If those sheep are pregnant, that little poodle will do the same damage to the flock when the sheep end up jumping through fences, over drains and into rivers to get away from it. They are not playing – they are being chased – but the dog is. Our breed classifications can sometimes mislead people in this regard. They do not know that a dog loves a chase. Someone might say that his or her little dog would never chase anything, but if that dog got out and saw a little movement, it would be off after it. We need to get more educational information out there for owners to explain little matters like this and breed classification.

When discussing licensing previously, someone pointed out to me that you cannot get a driving licence without proving that you can drive a car. The person asked me why people did not have to do an induction course, be it online, a theory test or even a box-ticking exercise, before they could get a dog licence. It was a valid point. It would require a great deal of setting up, of course. Unfortunately, a puppy farmer or someone else who is into dogs for all the wrong reasons can go online in the morning right now and license a dog. The person’s intentions towards the dog and how that dog will be treated are not checked by anyone. The person does not even have to tick a box to show if he or she knows how often a dog needs to be walked, how much water a dog drinks or for how long a dog can be left without water. A course would create awareness. It would only be a stimulus, though. It does not have to be the case that the day will come when a genuine family are refused a dog because they failed the theory test. I am calling it a theory test in comparison with driving licences. We will always have problems when we throw things out like confetti. If people can easily get a licence online without needing to fill out any kind of information or show that they know what they are getting themselves into, there will be problems.That is an area, again, going back to the education side of things, into which we need to put a little bit of thought and effort and a little bit of work.

The other issue goes back to where I started, which is the fact that we have so many different Departments involved. While we have Ministers and officials here from the Departments, at the end of the day it is the local authorities on the ground to which we will turn if there are issues with dogs. If a dog is roaming around a housing estate, it is the dog warden who is called. We need consistency there too, however. There are not the same pound facilities in the different local authority areas. There is not even the same availability of wardens. There are many counties in which there are no wardens at all. It does not seem to be a priority of county councils or local authorities. If the warden retires or is out, the same priority will not be put on replacing him or her or getting a new one as it would be if it were the roads engineer or litter warden because they are more visible. It does not seem to be a priority. It needs to filter down from Government to the local authorities that they need to have consistency. We have a role to play in that as Senators through our elected councillors. We can feed that awareness back down and try to have a little bit more consistency across the board in local authorities but also make it a priority within each local authority.

On the back of our deliberations at committee and from publishing the reports, a few people contacted me about issues pertaining to animal welfare and dogs in particular. It is amazing to consider all the side issues that are out there for genuine dog lovers and dog people who are really passionate about dog welfare. As far as people wondering whether we could do something to get a more structured pet cemetery set up, maybe that is a long way down the line. Our first and major priority has to be the welfare side of things. There are so many aspects to being a caring and loving dog owner that are not catered for out there. There are people with a genuine passion for how a dog should be treated even at the end of life in that there should be community or public pet cemetery facilities. While they do not all pertain to section 1 of the Bill, these are all issues we would love to be able to solve in our roles. There is loads of potential within the Bill but I will stress again that it must be done in conjunction with the findings of the interdepartmental group on dogs, the update of which I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

In conclusion, I compliment Senator Boylan and her colleagues for bringing this Bill to this Stage and initiating the debate. I look forward to working with them and, indeed, the three Departments and everybody involved who has a shared interest in animal welfare. I am a dog lover. I do not know if Senators can see in the distance, but the lad at home is shedding at the moment and I brought dog hairs to the debate this morning. He was not letting me go without saying goodbye. It only takes the slightest touch at this stage. The hairs are white too so people think I am shedding myself. I will leave it there for the minute. I look forward to engaging further as the debate progresses. As I said, I look forward to hearing the Minister's update on the interdepartmental group. I compliment Senator Boylan and her colleagues on bringing this Bill to this Stage.