Clare Daly
Question:55. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to amend the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 to prohibit hare coursing. [14455/16]
View answerWednesday, 8 June 2016
Questions (55)
Oral answers (6 contributions)
Under the provisions of the Greyhound Industry Act 1958, the regulation of coursing is chiefly a matter for the Irish Coursing Club, ICC, subject to the general control and direction of Bord na gCon. The welfare of greyhounds involved in coursing is provided for in the Welfare of Greyhounds Act 2011 which, inter alia, requires that persons who course greyhounds must have regard to the code of practice in the care and welfare of the greyhound, developed jointly by the ICC and Bord na gCon. The ICC has assured my Department that it has extensive systems and practices in place to underpin the welfare of hares and greyhounds involved in coursing and that it goes to great lengths to ensure the highest standards of welfare are adhered to.
A monitoring committee on coursing is in place, comprising officials from my Department, the ICC and the National Parks and Wildlife Service to monitor developments in coursing and the situation is kept under constant review to ensure that coursing is run in a well controlled and responsible manner.
Hares may only be collected for coursing by clubs affiliated to the ICC in accordance with the terms of licences granted by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. These licences contain 26 conditions which have been refined over the years, the majority of which are central to hare welfare and include a variety of measures, such as a requirement that a qualified veterinarian attends at all coursing meetings to report on the health of the hares, a prohibition on the coursing of hares more than once in the same day, a prohibition on the coursing of sick or pregnant hares and a requirement that hares be released back into the wild during daylight hours.
Coursing clubs are required to comply fully with directives, instructions and guidance notes issued by the ICC in all matters relating to the capture, keeping in captivity, tagging, marking, coursing and release of hares, and the muzzling of greyhounds. I have no plans to ban hare coursing but I have no hesitation in saying that it is critically important that those involved in the sport must operate in accordance with the regulatory framework and with the welfare of both hares and greyhounds in mind at all times.
This is another sort of Irish solution to an Irish problem, because the rules belie a reality that is very different. We have an incredible contradiction where, on the one hand, hares are protected under the Wildlife Act but, on the other, under the Animal Health and Welfare Act all animals are protected with the exception of hares to be coursed. This resulted, in 2015, in a situation where 7,000 hares were taken from the wild to be used in live coursing events. We are one of a minority of countries which allow this barbarity to continue. Contrary to the Minister's statements on the conditions hares face, the reports from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which is employed to monitor this situation, tell us that only 17 of the 75 events held in the country last year had National Parks and Wildlife Service officials in attendance and the state of many of the hares requiring assistance, which were released back to the wild distressed, is evident in its reports, which refute the information given to the Minister by Bord na gCon.
It is an Irish solution to an Irish problem. I am not sure if Deputy Daly is suggesting that we should have an imported solution to an Irish problem. I highlight that a very high proportion of hares netted for hare coursing were returned successfully to the wild. For example, at the end of the 2014-15 season, 99.3% of hares captured were released in a healthy condition back after coursing. We have moved some distance in respect of where coursing was some years ago in terms of the monitoring and high standards of welfare we apply in terms of both the greyhound and the hare, something to which all parties involved can be paid tribute, including Bord na gCon, the Irish Coursing Club, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and my Department. For that reason, we have now reached a situation where we have a sustainable industry and I do not propose to ban the industry.
My solution is to ban coursing outright. I speak as a Deputy who represents the only part of Dublin where this practice still continues. The Irish Council Against Blood Sports has a video of this barbarity in Balbriggan, which is in my constituency. It shows agitated hares running up and down within the confines of a coursing field while coursing members shout and scream at them in that enclosure. With regard to the number of hares released back to the wild, many of those hares are in a very distressed state and die afterwards. This has also been stated by officials from the National Parks and Wildlife Service. In Nenagh, for example, some of those released included heavily pregnant hares, which the Minister has told us are supposed to be protected. The rules do not serve to protect the hares in that regard, and how could they when we have greyhounds weighing 60 to 88 lbs and travelling at 43 mph, which can do a hell of a lot of harm, even if they wear a muzzle, to a hare that weighs approximately 6 lbs. The protections are really not worth what is claimed, and this is one of the reasons the Irish hare - a unique race of mountain hare - is now becoming extinct, even though on one hand we say it should be protected.
The Minister to conclude, please.
I have nothing to add to what I have stated already. We have travelled some distance in respect of the supervision of hare coursing and I do not have any plans to ban it. Equally, however, I would add that all parties involved in hare coursing must operate within the law and the terms of licences issued to them in respect of hare capture and so on.