Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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32. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine in relation to the now annual animal welfare event which was recently held on 12 June 2015 in Farmleigh, if he will ensure that a broad range of animal rights and welfare organisations are invited to attend in the future. [25839/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The focus of this year’s Animal Welfare Conference held in Farmleigh on 12 June was on the welfare of dogs and horses and on providing information to those involved in direct provision of welfare services in these areas. Invitations were extended to the 147 animal welfare organisations throughout the country involved in receipt of ex-gratia funding from my Department.

This year’s venue had much more limited capacity than Dublin Castle which was not available. Nevertheless, every effort was made to have a wide cross section of interested individuals and organisations involved in animal welfare represented. In this regard, after the initial invitations were issued, a record was kept of all requests for invitations and, as far as possible, these requests were facilitated with invit ations to organisations on a standby list. The intention was that this list would be used to fill any places from initial invitees who were unavailable to attend. I understand that all of these requests were facilitated with 47 standby invitations issued. The conference was fully attended with over 140 delegates.