Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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130. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide a list of all dog breeding establishments, per county and per category of establishment, for the years 2022, 2023, 2024 and to date in 2025, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38320/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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The Dog Breeding Establishments Act 2010 provides a robust regulatory framework for the licensing, monitoring and inspection of dog breeding establishments by local authorities and, where a serious and immediate threat exists to public health or animal health and welfare, for the closure of such establishments.

Following a public consultation, revised guidelines for dog breeding establishments were published in July 2018 and came into effect on 1 January 2019. There is a substantial shift in the guidelines towards a focus on the welfare of dogs and pups. Each local authority is responsible to maintain the register of dog breeding establishments in its functional area.

The Act also places an obligation on any person seeking to operate a dog breeding establishment to have the premises included on the register. Welfare standards regarding dog breeding establishments have been provided for through the revised guidelines for dog breeding establishments.

Recommendation 11 of the Report of the Working Group on Control of Dogs recommended that a centralised national database, published online and updated regularly, of dog breeding establishments should be created. This register was first collated and published in 2023, and was then updated in 2024.

The Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht is in the process of requesting updates for the database from all local authorities for 2025. Once all returns are received, collated and analysed, they will be published on gov.ie.