Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 June 2021
1106. Deputy Thomas Gould asked the Minister for Justice the number of convictions or fines and the number of court appearances, respectively, resulting from equine seizures in Cork city and county in each of the years 2015 to 2020 and to date in 2021, in tabular form. [30674/21]
View answerAs the Deputy will appreciate, the relevant legislation surrounding control of horses, namely the Control of Horses Act 1996 (as amended), is the responsibility of my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Under the Act, the relevant local authority is vested with powers to nominate authorised persons to establish control zones for the control of horses within their area of responsibility and to prosecute offences under the Act in their own name. As these matters rest within the remit of the local authorities, I am unable to comment on them as Minister.
To be of assistance, however, I have contacted An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service and have been advised of the following.
The Garda Authorities have advised that there are no offences under the Control of Horses Act 1996 that are designated as Fixed Charge offences. As such, there are no fines issued by An Garda Síochána for offences under the Act.
The Courts Service have advised that at present the Courts have no specific codes for the Deputy's query. Codes have been provided by the Courts Service to An Garda Síochána but, to date, they have not been implemented on the Garda systems.
There may have been prosecutions but they would be recorded by way of uncoded free text on the Courts Service system by individual prosecutors and the Courts Service are unable to run reports on such free text. Unfortunately, the Courts Service is unable to provide any statistics as requested by the Deputy as a result.
