Coursing is cruel. Which Member will deny that statement? Coursing people admit that coursing is cruel — and I know quite a few coursing people. I have lived in Balbriggan, north County Dublin, for 11 years and I have often discussed live hare coursing. Balbriggan is the venue for the largest coursing meeting in Dublin but it is also the venue for the largest protest against coursing in Dublin every year. Let us have no more whingeing about city folk having a go at their country cousins.
We have hare coursing in Saggart, County Dublin, where muzzling was tried and failed. At Ballough, Donabate — I can produce the programme to show Members — the photograph I have in my possession of a mutilated hare was taken. With other members of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports I have been threatened in writing with death unless we stopped highlighting the cruelty of live hare coursing. The Garda Síochána have taken up the matter.
It seems that the Government do not want to do anything and at the same time want to be seen to be bending under the pressure of 80 per cent of the Irish people who clearly want an end to the coursing of live hares.
The ridiculous suggestion from the Government that greyhounds going coursing should be muzzled has been consistently rejected in the past by the Irish Coursing Club, not because it will still allow hares to be injured and die from fright as they do, but because muzzling is cruel and dangerous for the dogs.
Perhaps the House needs to be reminded of the position of the Irish Coursing Club on muzzling as clearly stated in November 1987 when Mr. Gay Byrne interviewed Mr. Matt Bruton, chairman of the ICC on the "Late Late Show". The following is a short extract from the interview:
Gay Byrne: Is it not on for dogs to be muzzled?
Matt Bruton: The answer to that quite simply is that it was tried some years ago. An official trial session was held by the Irish Coursing Club at the South County Dublin meeting in Saggart, as it was then, and it was a total disaster.
Gay Byrne: Will the dogs not chase?
Matt Bruton: In one instance the dog broke his neck. Now I must explain to the audience — they wouldn't appreciate it. The dogs had wire muzzles on them similar to what racing greyhounds currently wear on our tracks. And when a dog is driving in to catch a hare or to turn a hare as the case is, obviously when he has no muzzle, he can slide along the ground if he misses his drive. When the muzzle is on, the effect is that he stubs his nose into the ground and consequently he will break his neck.
Mr. Jerry Desmond, Secretary of the ICC, has made his views on muzzling greyhounds clear. He said:
Trials were carried out and we found that the hares were being damaged by the muzzles. Hares find it very difficult to recover from injuries.
A leading greyhound authority, Mr. John Martin, did not mince his words either when he said:
Those who advocate muzzling know nothing about the nature of the sport. The risk of injury to the dogs is obvious. Injury can be caused to hares causing prolonged and agonising deaths.
Aside from injuries to a dog and hare there is the matter of terrorising the hare. Many die from fright. We should bear in mind that to terrorise an animal is an offence under our Protection of Animals Act. If muzzling is introduced are they to be used in training and trials as well as on coursing day? Who will supervise all this? Will it be the Irish Coursing Club stewards, as previously, that is self-supervision, or will the taxpayer be obliged to pay for a special supervisory body? What of the dog's motivation to pursue its quarry? Muzzling can only lead to a massive increase in blooding incidents. This is fact, not fiction.
There is only one answer to the coursing problems and that is an outright ban. This is not a debate about whether or not we ascribe human feelings to a timid wild animal as Deputy Dukes would have us believe. Enough medical research has been undertaken for us to know how coursing affects hares regardless of the muzzling issue.
I know what goes on before the Annual Park Meeting — the public coursing event — because I live in a town which has had coursing on and off since the British army garrison in Gormanston Camp introduced it in the last century. I wish to have that recorded. Enclosed coursing was originally a very British sport in this country and in Britain it is now outlawed, which goes to show how much it brought shame to those who developed it. I would ask the Deputies who keep telling us this is a traditional sport to please read up on Irish history. Of course, if some evidence exists that Fionn Mac Cumhaill was a British army private in the 19th century, then we can all think again.
I would ask Deputy Brian Fitzgerald from County Meath to please show some respect for the memory of Wolfe Tone and stop telling us coursing will unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. As an Irishman I am deeply hurt and insulted to think that I must allow hares to be terrorised for the sake of gambling and sadism, to promote greater understanding between Irish people who go to different Churches and those who go to none.
I am not the only person who could be offended by Deputy Fitzgerald's remarks. In a letter to party leaders this month the Methodist Conference secretary, Mr. Edmund Mawhinney writes:
In the opinion of the Conference the practice of enclosed hare coursing clearly involves unnecessary suffering to defenceless animals and it requests that members of your Party be allowed freedom of conscience in voting on this Bill.
In my own town of Balbriggan, the local branch of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports is led by joint patrons, local clergy from both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland in Balbriggan. What we are opposing is a barbaric activity supported by taxpayers' money. I understand that £28,000 was given to coursing clubs last year just to reward them for releasing the hares.
I want to tell the House what happens to a hare before the "big day" and the cruelty involved, quite apart from the kill which is obviously an abomination too. At the beginning of the season children are sent out to the fields to beat the hedges and round up the unsuspecting hares. One vet writing in a coursing publication from Abbeyfeale Coursing Club about the effects of netting on hares stated:
We have regularly got (or found) strained backs, dislocated hips, broken thighs, broken ribs, cuts in webs, we even got a broken neck and another with his ear hanging off.
Deputy Dukes could also learn from the expertise of the same vet who writes:
It is impossible to completely avoid stress in hares once you manhandle them and take them out of their natural environment. Stress can come in many shapes and forms and as long as you have the hare in captivity he is prone to it — resulting in his disability and even death at times.
This same vet also is very revealing in his advice to coursing clubs regarding the health of hares in captivity. He writes:
Hares have absolutely no resistance to infection — once the skin is broken that is the end of him.
Tagging the hares' ears is a common practice to ensure they are not coursed at other places. The vet admits that:
When it came to coursing time most of the tagged ears were badly infected, in fact some were so bad and the infection so bad that the tags actually fell out through the resulting holes. The following year I had no option but to change my tactics, so instead of inserting a tag at entry, I just punched a small hole in the ear with a leather punch and sprayed both sides with an antibiotic spray, with the intention of having all the holes fully healed by the time of the trials.
He went on to say:
When I went to insert the tags, I was horrified to find that more than half the newly punched holes were again badly infected so I had to tag most of them in a new part of the ear. I then realised that unlike cows and calves, hares are continually washing and cleaning themselves and so have a ready means of transferring infection from their contaminated feet to their ears.
I urge all parties and Members in the House to examine their consciences. Muzzling will not stop cruelty in coursing. In fact, coursing people locally have told me that blooding will have to increase to keep the dogs keen on chasing the live hare. I particularly urge those Ministers who have championed the cause of animals over the years to act now according to their word. The Minister for Defence and the Marine, Deputy Andrews, the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Deputy M. Higgins, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Deputy Quinn, the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs, Deputy Tom Kitt, and the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy Stagg, are all renowned for their commitment to the campaign to abolish coursing. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Deputy Stagg, in a statement to a rally on hare coursing in Balbriggan said:
On behalf of myself and the Labour Party I want to express my full and unequivocal support for the banning of hare coursing in Ireland. It is a travesty that hare coursing is referred to as "a sport". It is a sadistic, cruel and barbarous activity and it is a discredit to our society that such activities remain legal. The vast majority of Irish people want this activity banned and the Labour Party commits itself to working with any other political party in Dáil Éireann to bring about an end to hare coursing.
Where are the vast majority of Deputies in Labour and Fianna Fáil who say they are opposed to coursing? I urge them all to vote for this Wildlife Bill and allow it to be amended — if they wish — on Committee Stage. I would ask them not to be deaf to the people of Ireland. I would ask them to remember that the Irish Council Against Blood Sports has branches in many rural areas in the four provinces and its headquarters are in Cork. Listen to the cry of the hare at a coursing meeting — an innocent victim of coursing — and vote for the Bill because this is what you are voting against.