Animal Welfare Seanad Éireann — 2023-05-24 ============================================================ Lynn Boylan (SF), Agricultural Panel Tá fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. This morning, I want to raise the matter of the rehoming of horses which are seized under the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013. I had my own Bill, the Animal Health and Welfare (Dogs) Bill, which passed Second Stage unanimously here. Unfortunately, the guillotine meant that it did not progress to Committee Stage yet. The reason I have tabled this Commencement matter is to flag once again to the Government that if we are going to close the gap and introduce legislation to deal with animal health and welfare, we need to get it right in one go. This means addressing the gaps in the re-homing of dogs and the re-homing of horses. I will give an example that has been in the newspapers multiple times. This is the case of a horse racer who had 35 counts of animal cruelty against her. The horses have been with a welfare organisation for a number of years. It has cost it €350,000 to keep the horses. They are thoroughbred racehorses that were in a state of neglect. They were taken in by the welfare organisation but it is that organisation which is footing the bill while the person tries to obfuscate and delay the court proceedings. We all know the horse racing industry gets a huge amount of money from the public purse. When things go wrong in the industry it is the welfare organisations that must pick up the slack and clean up the mess left by the rogue operators. The bare minimum we should do is ensure that horses are re-homed as soon as possible and that people who engage in animal cruelty are not allowed to obfuscate and cause obstruction in the justice system. I look forward to hearing the response of the Minister of State. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-05-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-05-24