Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Fox Hunting) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-17
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Réada Cronin (SF), Kildare North

It strengthens the status quo and existing power structures. Sinn Féin will continue to confront the system itself while acting collectively as a credible alternative government, but not by attacking other parties of the left.
My duty as a Sinn Féin TD is to our local communities, who need us to act as a team to provide an alternative government to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Yes, I disagree with my party policy on this issue. I have said it loud and clear. My party does not expect me to pretend otherwise. I did not join Sinn Féin to rid Ireland of blood sports. Yes, I would love that to be a little benefit on the side, but the principal reason I joined Sinn Féin was to play a part in uniting my country. Item one on my agenda is unity, not to split. I promise my constituents who detest fox hunting as much as I do that this is not over. I will work within my party to banish this relic of British colonialism affecting our native wildlife. To Sinn Féin members and supporters, the vast majority of whom oppose blood sports, I say that we will change things by organising. We will not win by walking away. We will act collectively because we know division is the gift that the right does not even need to ask for in a political system designed to divide us.
It is easy to have solidarity in your party name; it takes a bit more solidarity to actually have solidarity in your politics. When we succeed in changing our party policy on fox hunting, we will bring forward a carefully drafted Bill, a Bill that will protect our beautiful, intelligent native Irish fox, ár maidrín rua, ár sionnach álainn.

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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