Written answers

Tuesday, 13 July 2021

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Animal Welfare

Photo of Thomas GouldThomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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631. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the funding given to Cork City Council in respect of equine welfare management in the past five years in tabular form. [37775/21]

Photo of Charlie McConalogueCharlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The Control of Horses Act, 1996 designates responsibility to local authorities for issues relating to stray and neglected horses in both urban and rural areas. 

The Department provides funding to the local authorities to assist them in implementation of the Act. From 2015 to date, an amount of €63,166 was paid to Cork City Council to assist in dealing with the issue of stray horses (table attached shows the breakdown by year). Separately, the Department also provided funding in 2016 of €19,370 to Cork City Council for the provision of an education and training programme for horse owners for the urban horse population with the aim of reducing the number of straying animals and encouraging young people in the care and welfare of horses. The Department continues to initiate and support measures to help to improve the equine welfare situation, particularly with a view to developing longer term, sustainable solutions to problems.  

Animal welfare is high on the agenda of the Department and considerable resources and funding are provided to address the issue. In December 2020, I announced the provision of record funding of €3.2 million to 101 animal welfare organisations throughout the country, some of which work with equines and are located in the Cork City area. The Programme for Government contains an undertaking to make additional funding available to animal welfare charities and urban horse welfare programmes over the coming years, to which I am fully committed.

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