Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the UN agreement although we know that it does not go far enough. The UN agreement is indicative of the influence that the fossil fuel industry has on negotiations and particularly at COP28. I do hope that the Members of this House will support my Bill when I introduce it in the new year as it will seek to rein in the fossil fuel lobbyists in this country.

We are approaching Christmas. Today will be the last opportunity I will have before we break for the Christmas holidays to, once again, encourage people not to buy puppies from puppy breeders and not to bring dogs into their homes at Christmas. However, if they are considering bringing a dog into their family then I ask them to go to rescue centres where over 3,000 dogs await their forever home and hundreds more dogs are on waiting lists to be surrendered by their owners.

I welcome the news announced yesterday that the EU is set to introduce a range of new animal welfare laws for companion animals. The improvements will cover a number of areas that I have raised in this House and were outlined in the report on dog welfare produced by the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The EU is going to call for the introduction of national databases. The EU recommends that a single national database would enhance traceability, which is recommendation 6 in the report produced by the committee. The EU has also called for greater restrictions on the online sale of pets, which is another recommendation in the report.

I wish to mention one particular area. The EU has called for greater regulation of dog breeding establishments. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to come to the House in the new year to clarify whether the regulations at EU level will increase and improve the situation in Ireland or whether Ireland will be seen as the bar other European countries must reach. I ask as Ireland is known as the puppy breeding capital of Europe. The excessive breeding in this country fuels the post-Covid crisis evidenced by the surrendering of dogs by those who did not do their due diligence in buying dogs during Covid; they were able to easily access dogs through these breeders and dogs that are now being surrendered due to behavioural problems. The latter come from breeding establishments so are poorly socialised because they had very little access to humans and other dogs. I ask the Leader to arrange a debate on the EU proposals. Ireland is certainly not the level at which we want other EU countries to come up to and we want to set a much higher bar when it comes to breeding establishments. Last week, there was an incident in Cork where dogs were found soaked in urine and their fur was so matted they could not defecate properly. The case involved a breeding establishment that had been given a licence by Cork County Council. The vet who conducted the inspections in 2021 said that the animals seemed fit and healthy. Clearly, there is a problem in this country with dog breeding establishments and they need to be brought up to a better standard.