Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 26 March 2013
127. Deputy John Browne asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he intends to introduce a unitary registration system for horses; if all change of ownership will have to be registered on this system; if the system will be similar to that for bovines; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14737/13]
View answerThe identification and registration of equidae is governed by EU Council Directives 90/426/EEC and 90/427/EEC and Commission Regulation (EC) No 504/2008 of 6 June 2008. The latter regulation, came into effect on 1 July 2009, provides that equine animals registered after that date must be identified with a passport and a microchip.
The EU legislation has been transposed into national legislation via S.I. No. 357 of 2011 - European Communities (Equine) Regulations 2011 (as amended). This legislation provides that if an equine animal has not been identified within six months of the date of its birth, or by the 31st of December in the year of its birth, whichever date occurs later, then the equine animal cannot be admitted to the food chain. S.I. No 357 of 2011 was amended in September 2012 by S.I. 371 of 2012 in order to strengthen the powers of the Minister in relation to approval of an issuing body for equine passports and prosecutions in relation to equine identification and to make it an offence to forge or tamper with an equine passport.
With regard to a single registration system for equidae, the position is that Regulation 504/2004 provides that, in the case of equidae which qualify for registration with a breed society, the passport must be issued by the relevant breed society. I have indicated that this regulation should be amended to provide for passports to be issued by a single Passport Issuing Organisation. I note that the EU Directorate General for Health and Consumers has indicated in its recently published Action Plan for dealing with the fall-out from the horsemeat issue that it intends to submit a proposal to the Council and European Parliament for the transfer responsibility for the issuing of passports from Passport Issuing Organisations to the competent authorities. A formal Commission proposal is expected in the second half of 2013.
On the issue of the transfer of ownership, there is no provision in the EU or national legislation on equine identification for recording the transfer of ownership of equines and my Department is currently considering how best to deal with this issue in the absence of an EU legislative basis. However, my Department is developing a central database of horses which will involve migration of selected data from Passport Issuing Bodies to the Animal Identification and Movement database in the Department. The intention is that this database may be used, as it develops, to facilitate the recording of changes of ownership. The system for equines will be similar to the approach used for bovines. However, the recording system on the equine central database will be designed specifically to reflect the specific regulatory requirements in the equine sector which are somewhat different from those in the bovine sector.
