The purpose of this section is to enable the Minister, if and when the occasion might require, to make regulations governing the practice of falconry. This ancient sport is engaged in only to a very limited extent in Ireland at present. Only one falconry is known to the Department. The species involved in falconry, birds of prey of the order of Falconiformes, eagles, hawks, falcons and harriers will be specially protected under the Bill. Moreover, it will be necessary to get a special licence from the Minister under section 34 (3) (c) to capture them for falconry purposes. It is considered that these provisions will sufficiently control the sport as practised at present. It is not intended to implement this section at the moment. It is an enabling section to enable us to control falconry, if necessary.
SECTION 41.
Mr. Kitt
Is falconry coming back as a sport?
We only know of one falconry practitioner in this country.
Mr. Kitt
Would I be right in saying that, if the eagle were to come back, it would be in a mountainous place? I heard people say Connacht would be the place for the eagle.
To Hell or to Connacht.
Mr. Kitt
I know that the Burkes used to pay rents to Queen Elizabeth by giving hawks.
Under section 41 if you are found with an eagle in your pocket you will be prosecuted. If you wanted to try and breed eagles and you went abroad and brought back a few eggs, would you have to get permission?
Everybody knows imports are very rightly restricted in the interests of agriculture at the moment. One cannot go abroad and bring anything you like back in your pocket.
The anti-bloodsports people are very much against falconers. It is the cruelest sport of all. I suppose when we allow coursing and hares to be captured, we cannot expect too much, but for a hawk to be sent up to take down a lark singing up in the air is to me the cruelest thing.
This is nature in action, and you cannot defeat the natural practices of the hawk. We all see the hawk now and again.
We are legislating or the preservation of fauna and we are encouraging a type of sport that tends to kill them off.
If there were no killing off and if nature did not dispatch some——
The lark is the main target of people who practise falconry. The lark soars up very high and if a hawk goes up after the lark he takes him down dead. The man who wrote " The Lark in the Clear Air " did not have any such cruel thoughts. The little hawk they use is known as a kestral, but it is not mentioned here at all.
Falconry is going on in the wild at the moment.
There is very little of it in this country.
In the wild. We have all seen the hawk descending on smaller birds and killing them and we have seen their feathers in the fields where they have been operating. We are moving forward here in so far as we are taking powers to regulate the whole sport if necessary. We cannot regulate the actions of hawks in the wild, but we are taking a power in this section to regulate the sport of falconry in the future, if we so desire. I do not know whether Deputy Brennan objects to that or not, but this is a move forward.
I cannot see what the regulations will do. Does the Minister mean to say the hawk will not still go out into the wild and pursue his prey?
The Minister cannot stop that.
How can you regulate that?
You cannot, that is what I am saying. If the sport of falconry was to crop up all over the country we could regulate it and control it under this section.
Deputy Hogan O'Higgins talked about the hawk and the chickens, there is one aspect of falconry that I have seen to which I would not be attracted and that is the feeding of falcons indoors. At least the hawk will take the chicken in the natural scene. But again we are not concerned here with cruelty, and because of that I would do no more than comment on it. This artificial method of feeding falcons is something which is not to be condoned.
All this may be controlled and regulated under this section.
The anti-bloodsports people are very much opposed to falconry. I am not in the Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown area, but I can assure you that there is a very strong school of thought opposed to falconry.
Is it not legal to use live bait in the training of falcons? I rather think that under other legislation it possibly would be. There are only two such centres in this country, one in Kildare and one in Clonmel.
You will have plenty of them after this, because it is legalised now.
No, it is not legalised. It is legal at the moment. I am asking the Deputies to read the section and approach this in a reasonable way. What I am doing here is taking power to make regulations regulating hunting by means of eagles, hawks, falcons and other birds of prey. There is no such authority at the moment. People can hunt——
It is implied.
It is not implied, and anti-bloodsports people should be balanced, too. They pick out certain things and so to be logical they should be against shooting in all its forms. They should be against fowling, fishing and the lot.
I question fishing——
There is nothing to inhibit the Minister here being made to make a regulation which could in fact cover certain cruel practices in relation to the pursuit of falconry. I do not think there is anything in the section to which I would be opposed.
I am not going overboard about this, because I am not an anti-blood sports person.
I am anti-cruelty.
I do know that falconry is one of the things they condemn very severely. Heretofore it has been condemned by the general revulsion of society, and this at least shows it is all right.
It does not show that it is all right. It shows that if the necessity arises it will be regulated and one of the objects in regulating it will be to eliminate abuses.
If there was a section here permitting the use of live bait for the training of hawks and so on, I personally would be very much opposed to such inclusion, but it is not; in fact, the Minister in due course will probably make regulations——
Does the Minister propose to regulate ones that are already operating?
No, it is not proposed to introduce regulations in the foreseeable future as far as we know there are no abuses.
Does the Minister know how many there are?
I saw one of them myself down in Kildare during the last few years.
Does he think it is desirable to regulate the staff of these?
We do not think it is essential at the moment.