Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 11 Oct 2011

Vol. 743 No. 1

Welfare of Greyhounds Bill 2011: Report and Final Stages

Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Deputy Shane McEntee)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 4, line 9, to delete "Fisheries and Food" and substitute "Food and the Marine".

As the House will be aware the purpose of this legislation is to further promote the welfare of greyhounds. I am glad to say the proposed legislation has the broad support of all sides of the House. We discussed the detail on Committee Stage last week. On Committee Stage we discussed and agreed three small and related changes to section 25. They are to remove the word "or" from between section 25(1)(a) and 25(1)(b) and insert——

Acting Chairman (Deputy Olivia Mitchell)

Does the Minister of State have further amendments to the Bill?

Deputy Shane McEntee

Yes.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Olivia Mitchell)

Are they being done after this?

Deputy Shane McEntee

Yes. Section 25(1) describes three ways in which a person may be guilty of obstruction. During the drafting there were probably initially only two types of obstruction envisaged and therefore the word "or" was placed between section 25(1)(a) and (b). At a later point a third type of obstruction was added as a third paragraph (c), and when the word “or” should have been placed between (b) and (c) this was not done and was only noticed after publication. I trust this minor change will be agreeable to the House.

Returning to the original list, I also propose a number of minor amendments. The first is to section 2. The House is aware there has been an alteration of the name of Department and the title of Minister and there was an order by the Government on 8 September 2011 altering the title of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Section 2 of the Bill, which is concerned with definitions, must therefore be amended to refer to the new ministerial title.

Amendment agreed to.

Deputy Shane McEntee

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, line 41, to delete "Finance" and substitute "Public Expenditure and Reform".

Similar to the alteration to the new title of Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the title of Minister for Finance must be changed to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Accordingly section 4 must be amended to refer to the new ministerial title.

Amendment agreed to.

Deputy Shane McEntee

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 18, line 31, to delete "has" and substitute "may have taken place".

This is a minor amendment to improve the grammatical consistency in the section on welfare notices. Section 21 lists five general situations in which a welfare officer may issue a welfare notice. The section commences with "Where a welfare office is of the opinion that". Section 21(d) contains the fourth of these situations and currently reads “a contravention of this Act or regulations under this Act, has or may be taking place, or”. It will be amended to remove the word “has” and replace it with “may have taken place” so it will read, “a contravention of this Act or regulations under this Act, may have taken place or may be taking place, or”. This ensures grammatical consistency in how the Bill talks about the past and present tenses.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill reported with amendments, received for final consideration and passed.