Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Fox Hunting) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-17
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I thank Deputy Coppinger for bringing the Bill forward. I am very happy to support it.
I love sport. I am passionate about sport but I find it had to hard to understand how anybody could gain entertainment from a large group of people on horseback, with a pack of dogs, pursuing a frightened animal, and then watching and celebrating as that frightened animal is torn to pieces by dogs. That is not a sport. That is just an exercise in cruelty and barbarism.
As has been said, this is not an ancient Irish rural tradition. It is a colonial pursuit that was developed by the British nobility. As for the point about the contrast between the enforced starvation of the Irish people during the Famine and the expansion of so-called rural pursuits by the British nobility, there is a connection. Of course, the genocide of the Irish people during what is known as the Famine was linked to an ambition by our colonial masters to drive the people off the land and clear the land. It was an exaggerated version of the enclosure movement, where the rich wanted to drive ordinary people off the land and clear it for their so-called pursuits.
It is ironic, in a way, that those who defend this practice, although it is interesting that the Minister does not actually defend the practice-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-17