Thank you, a Chathaoirligh for allowing me to take this motion this evening. Some of my friends have been teasing me about this subject. They wonder about this newfound concern for animals that was not apparently part of my agenda up to now. In recent times we have all become more and more educated as to the interdependability of creation in the universe. According as the environment is threatened, we are coming to realise more and more how much the universe hangs together, as it were, and there is a genuine increase in people's concern for animal welfare. While I am aware of the extremes to which this can lead, nonetheless I am very happy to be a voice for those who most certainly have no voice at all so that when I go home tonight, if I do not gain any more graduate votes, I can look my cat straight in the eye. I am proud also to be president of the Irish Anti-Vivisection Society having succeeded the late John O'Donovan of RTE in that office. It is at their behest that I raise this matter.
I would like to outline to the House what is involved here. The Minister has responsibility for administering the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876, which is the one governing painful scientific experiments on animals. When that Act was passed originally over 100 years ago there were very few animal experiments, perhaps a few thousand a year in what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1987, the last year for which figures are available, there were over three million animal experiments in Britain. In this country over 37,000 animals were used in experiments that were, according to the Act, calculated to give pain.
There is very little else forbidden under the 1876 Act. It gives the Minister very wide discretion. There is almost nothing that cannot be done to a live animal in a laboratory if a senior scientist says so and the Minister for Health accepts his view that it is done in the course of useful research and necessary for the success of that research. The Minister has a great deal of discretion under this long-standing Act but it has to be said that Ministers in our country have used their discretion in a very responsible way, as have their officials. There is no general complaint with the Department of Health on that score. One does not find here the kind of pointless, repetitive, cruel experimentation which one hears about in other countries and which one sometimes sees referred to on television. One does not hear of experiments being done, for example, for frivolous reasons such as testing cosmetics, brake fluid or household cleansers. Perhaps it is that it is not commercially worthwhile to do such tests here since most of them are done abroad. It is also true, to give the Department their due, that the Minister and his predecessors have applied the 1876 Act, inadequate and outdated as it is, in a very humane and conscientious fashion.
The real reason I bring this up this afternoon is that there is reason to believe that things are changing. In 1987, the last year for which we have figures, for the first time in several years the number of experiments on animals in the Republic of Ireland went up substantially — 37,178 animals were used in experiments in 1987 compared with only 31,315 the year before. This is an increase from 1986 to 1987 of over 6,000 animals, nearly one-fifth. That is one cause for concern.
There is another matter that is puzzling and that is that the number of experiments in which no anaesthetic was used has gone down substantially whereas there has been an enormous increase from under 3,000 to nearly 16,000 in the number of experiments that were conducted completely under anaesthetic. One might ask what is the grievance there; this is an apparently more humane development that more and more animals are being put under anaesthetic. However, it is not as obvious as it seems. The majority of experiments consist of animals being injected with substances which are to be used in the manufacture of drugs and other therapeutic preparations to find out whether they contain any impurities. These tests were not normally particularly painful or distressing so for that reason they were done without anaesthetics but also because, if one uses an anaesthetic, the value of the test can be called into question and its accuracy compromised.
The great increase in experiments conducted with anaesthetics in 1987 suggests that something of a different kind is happening, the kind of test that would have caused severe pain or distress if no anaesthetic had been used. So is there research of a significant scale of a different kind now being done that was not being done before? That is one of the things I would like the Minister to explain to the House. What lies behind these statistics?
There is also another point. In the previous ten years the number of experiments seems to have decreased but when there is a drop in the figures it may well be that some largescale research programme is being phased out or that money is not available because of the recession. So we are not sure that the drop in figures over a number of years is a real turning away. It now turns out that there was not a real reduction and that there was a substantial increase in numbers.
Real reduction in animal experiments will come only when researchers methodically turn to alternative methods of research and eliminate gradually the use of animals in their work. I am not an extremist in these matters. I do not believe that animal experiments are always wrong but I do believe — and I think every humane person believes — that they must be justified. The question arises as to whether scientific research on live animals is an old-fashioned laboratory tool, whether the best research is not conducted by alternative methods and whether the Minister is committed in principle to the replacement of animals in scientific research by alternative methods. That is something I would be glad of his informing the House about. There is no public indication from the Minister of his support for the development of non-animal alternatives. Admittedly, this all costs money. Experimental procedures have to be validated very carefully. Throughout the world it is the small animal welfare groups who have very little resources but who are backing the non-animal alternatives. Even if we have the right to use animals for purposes of life and death, we still have a moral duty to look for alternatives.
Finally, I would like to ask the Minister whether it is intended to look again at the 1876 Act. All this area is governed by an Act which is well over a century old, which was drafted in very different times. The world has moved on. I understand that the question of amending the Act may arise shortly anyway because the country will have to implement the Council of Ministers' directives on the care and treatment of laboratory animals. So, as in so many other areas, we may be told what to do by the Community. Pending that, I would urge the Minister to think about restricting animal experimentation in this country to bona fide medical research and to allow it where there is no non-animal alternative available and to put that by way of amendment into the Act. The Medical Research Bureau and the Irish Cancer Society have already accepted the principle that there should not be experiments on animals where there is an alternative available. The public in Ireland would, I am sure, overwhelmingly approve any such humane advances. Because of our particular cultural conditioning as a country we are not noted perhaps for our tender consciences about animals which is why I raised the personal point about myself in the first place; but at the same time our people are a decent people and would approve progressive and humane legislation and amendment of the law in this respect. In a way what the society I represent are asking is that the Minister put into law what is the humane practice in his Department already. The Irish Anti-Vivisection Society are appreciative of the co-operation they have had from the Department over the years. They pay tribute to the genuine humane attitude of the Department. What they are now asking is why can the existing good practice not be consolidated in law. It would be greatly to our credit in Ireland if we did not have to wait to be told to do this, if we gave the lead ourselves.
