——governmental imprimatur, but it provides for muzzling of the greyhounds.
As Members of this House know from my contribution to Deputy Gregory's Bill and from comments made by me over the years, I favour banning live hare coursing. I think it is a cruel sport, in fact it is misdescribed as a sport. I do not understand why in the interests of developing coursing, to which I have no objection, the Irish Coursing Club has not utilised the experience in Australia where they have drag coursing. This has not simply been successful in the context of retaining coursing as a real sport but has subsantially increased the popularity of coursing in Australia.
Because of the emotions in the debates on live hare coursing, the Irish Coursing Club has not been sufficiently open-minded to consider an alternative approach which would be beneficial to many people who regard coursing as a real sport and which would attract people to coursing. Sadly, they have not done that.
The Bill before the House addresses a number of issues I want to mention. The first provisions contained in the Bill deal with Bord na gCon and its make up and Deputy Dukes, the Fine Gael spokesperson on Agriculture, spoke at some length on that at the commencement of this debate. The Minister in his opening address acknowledged the problems within the greyhound industry. As someone who enjoys the occasional attendance at the greyhound track in Shelbourne Park, one can see over the years the way in which the greyhound industry is retracting in the level of attendances and the age profile of the people attending. It is quite clear the industry is in huge difficulties. I understand why this Bill is before us. It is a fire brigade measure to address issues that Deputy Gregory raised, but it is unfortunate that the major problems with Bord na gCon and the running of the greyhound industry are not addressed in this legislation.
Those who are in favour of live hare coursing often refer to the importance of the greyhound industry. I do not accept the importance of the link between the live hare coursing and the greyhound industry. The greyhound industry is a multi-million pound industry with great potential. Greyhound track racing has a real potential in the context of tourism and in the context of its potential domestic market if it is dealt with differently. Bord na gCon has been an abject failure in the manner in which it has run the greyhound industry and it is bringing the industry to its knees. I do not welcome that.
I may dislike live hare coursing but it does not mean I want to see an end to the greyhound industry. That should be a developing industry in an era when people have more leisure time, some of it forced on them by unemployment, and in an era when tourists coming to a country are looking for something unique or different in events they attend. The greyhound industry has never been tailored to appeal to tourists coming to Ireland. It is fighting a rearguard action to try to retain those who have had an interest in the sport over the years and it is making little or no impact on the younger generation. Why is that? Part of the reason is the lack of a business approach on the part of Bord na gCon and its failure in a number of areas. I also believe that the association of live hare coursing with the greyhound industry has done the latter huge damage. The overwhelming majority of people under forty have a dislike for live hare coursing and many want to see it permanently banned. For too long the greyhound industry generally, greyhound tracks, those involved in racing greyhounds not at coursing meetings but at regular meetings in venues such as Shelbourne Park, has got a bad name because of its association with coursing.
In so far as the provisions of this Bill seek to remove the special position of members of the Irish Coursing Club from Bord na gCon, they are welcome but, as Deputy Dukes said, there is no clear indication in the Bill as to who this or any future Minister many appoint to Bord na gCon. What criteria will apply? The Minister talks about there not having to be a vocational element for appointees to Bord na gCon. It would seem to me there should be a vocational element, that it should not be perhaps in the context of the Irish Coursing Club, but the people appointed to Bord na gCon should be hard-headed business people who have a vision of how to develop the greyhound racing industry. What should be irrelevant to the appointments to Bord na gCon are the political affiliations of those appointed. Bord na gCon would want to sort out its operation because there is internecine warfare going on between the chief executive and the board. In fact what is happening is a dêbacle. This Bill is an indication of the failure of a political will to come to terms with that. However, it provides at least a vehicle to try to address some of the issues.
What concerned me about the Minister's remarks is that he seemed to say he will remove the provision whereby three members appointed to Bord na gCon need be members of the Irish Coursing Club — on the basis that that was not essential — and when he comes to making the appointments he may appoint more than three members. That is the wrong approach to adopt.
This Bill should set out some basic criteria or involvement in the business world other than membership of the Irish Coursing Club as being necessary for membership of the new board. That would result in there being some merit in someone being appointed to Bord na gCon, some procedure whereby it will not be just a ministerial prerogative. There should be a procedure laid down so that when the appointments arise, every Fianna Fáil Deputy is not lobbying for some member of their local cumann to be appointed a member or that some member of the Labour Party is not lobbying for a member of their party to be appointed. God knows, we know how good this Government, in particular the Labour Party element, has been in not simply getting Labour Party members into positions, but in getting in their friends and relatives. Therefore, the likely criteria that will be applied the next time will be whether the applicant is a card-carrying member of the Fianna Fáil or Labour parties. That is not the way that should be dealt with.
In relation to the provisions on muzzling, I should like to see hare coursing banned. It is clear that that will not happen bearing in mind the views expressed by Members. I am something of a pragmatist in that I take the view that if you cannot kick a door open all the way, you kick it halfway open. On the basis that there is no possibility during the lifetime of this Dáil of having hare coursing banned, at least muzzling dogs will reduce the number of kills but it is not sufficient to reduce, they should be eliminated.
The Minister's approach to this Bill gives rise to great concern. For example, section 3 (1A) (a) states:
The Minister may make regulations providing for—
(i) the muzzling of greyhounds...
If this Minister and Government are unwilling to ban live hare coursing that provision should say: "The Minister shall make regulations providing for the muzzling of greyhounds" and there should be a time scale within which such regulations shall be made. It is not good enough for the Minister to tell the House everybody is co-operating and it may not be necessary to make the regulations.
In this coursing season there has been a substantial reduction in the number of hares killed at meetings. The Minister gave statistics of four hares having been killed at meeting where dogs had been muzzled and eight having to be put down. It is sad to say that we regard that as acceptable because, as Deputy Gregory said, there is an inherent cruelty involved in coursing even if the animal escapes unhurt. Whether it is necessary for any animal in a so-called sport, to be deliberately put in fear is a question I would raise. I accept that wild animals are constantly in fear for all sorts of reasons and that when people go hunting animals are killed. I do not have extreme views about those things.
There is something unpleasant about crowds of people gathering to watch dogs set on live animals. While muzzling has reduced the level of the kill it is quite clear from this Bill there is no certainty that muzzling will even be required by law. It would also seem, in the context of the results so far, that 50 per cent of meetings using muzzles is not sufficient. I predict that if that remains the positions, we will have a repeat of what happened last time in Clounanna during the course of this season. That would be unacceptable and would cause grave embarrassment to members of the Government. As a matter of establishing that the experiment taking place in recent months has been successful, it should now be extended to all coursing meetings; I do not think any should be excluded.
This Bill is imperfect for another reason. It is well explained in the papers published this morning that one must address not only the issue of the behaviour on the coursing track but the issue of the behaviour of those training dogs for either live coursing or for the greyhound track. An article in today's Irish Independent under the heading “Dog ‘savaged tied rabbit” states:
A rabbit was savagely blooded by a greyhound on the land of top Irish greyhound trainer Matt O'Donnell, Cashel District Court was told yesterday.
The rabbit had its hind legs tied with bailer twine when killed by the dog, according to a team of wildlife rangers whose raid on the County Tipperary greyhound training centre resulted in O'Donnell, of Mounttaylor, Killenaule, being charged with permitting unnecessary suffering to the rabbit a year ago.
One of the wildlife rangers was also assaulted during the course of a visit to this farm. The perpetrators of this action were then charged with ill-treating the animal and, following legal argument over the delay in serving the summons, the case was adjourned to the High Court. Obviously there was an attempt made here to apply the law. I do not know what will happen in this High Court application. I will not say anything about it because I would expect it is sub judice but that was just an incident that was uncovered. How many other incidents of this nature that happened throughout the country are not reported or are not known about? They are not addressed in the Bill
The problem is that, even if we provide in law for muzzling for coursing meetings, there is a huge difficulty in supervising what happens behind the scenes in training dogs prior to coursing meetings.
I would have liked to have seen Deputy Gregory's Bill being successful. In the absence of that I, and I think many ordinary people, would acknowledge that muzzling at least provides additional protections to those that obtained heretofore. I say to the Minister also that we will be watching very closely what happens. The Minister should not be tardy about bringing forward regulations and a provision on Committee Stage to change the word "may" to the word "shall". We should be assured that those regulations will be brought into force before the end of this coursing season.
All the Minister could tell us in the course of his remarks yesterday, was the following:
These are enabling provisions which will give the Minister power to introduce the required measures without delay if the need arises. Deputies will also observe that these powers are being given added teeth by the level of the penalties being prescribed.
That is an apt phrase, "added teeth". I suppose what we want to do is to take the teeth out of coursing. There will be no "added teeth" if the regulations are not made. Even if they are made, since we are making it a "may" rather than a "shall" provision, who is to say that some Minister in some Government in the future will not rescind regulations made and create a situation where we will return to what was the position until this year when the experiment to provide for muzzling was inaugurated? It is a pity that the Government, just as it took it on itself to persuade the coursing clubs to provide for muzzling, did not encourage them into drag coursing. So far as the coursing clubs are concerned, my colleagues, Deputy McGahon, Deputy Flaherty and myself, as well as Deputy Gregory, are some kind of bêtes noires. We are supposed to be urban dwellers who do not have a feel for the countryside, who have an emotional view of animals not based on the realities of life and who are out to get people who have greyhounds and who engage in coursing. Nothing could be further from the truth. That is not what we want to do. We have a basic humanitarian view of life, which is that life in the real world, not just for animals but for humans as well, can be an extremely cruel experience. One does not have to add unnecessarily to the cruelty. That says something about what we are when we do, to use the old turn of phrase used for advertising butter.