Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Fox Hunting) Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Michael Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry If he did, he would not have said what he said. A lot has been said about the 73% of people who say that they do not want this type of fox hunting to continue. There is an important statistic left out of that, which is that 98% of those people said they had never seen a hunt or foxes being killed. They never saw anything. All they are doing is listening to media reports about this. These 73% are talking about something that 98% of them know absolutely nothing about in the first instance. I take issue with a comment Deputy Coppinger made earlier with regard to hill farming. She spoke as if she knew what she was talking about but unfortunately she obviously does not because she mentioned a word that Deputy Danny Healy-Rae mentioned a minute ago, that is, "grants". Is she living in the real world? She seems to be suggesting that, if a farmer goes into a field tomorrow and finds dead lambs - when I say dead, their throats will have been pulled apart by the Deputy's beautiful foxes and their limbs will have been torn asunder in the same way as hens will be - it is all right because the farmers will get a grant. That is rubbish. They will lose out financially. It is not just that. The Deputy said nothing about the torture the lambs, hens and geese go through. I heard it said earlier that we should compare dogs with foxes. This is wrong, dangerous and absolutely misleading. I was shocked to hear Deputy O'Gorman speak earlier but, then again, his lack of knowledge is exemplified by the Green Party when it comes to being out of touch with rural issues. This is not the first time he has showed a lack of knowledge about issues such as this. I do not welcome this debate but I welcome the fact that we will be able to vote the Bill down tonight. It is part of a constant attack, whether it is on the greyhound industry, horse racing or fishing. The Deputies all seem to hate the term "rural pursuits" all of a sudden. Why do they hate it? It means so much to so many people. It is like shooting. Maybe the Deputies think it is wrong to shoot grey crows. Do they know what a grey crow does to a defenceless lamb? If it is in any way weak or sick, the grey crow will come down from the sky and pull out its two eyes. The Deputies do not want to hear that. They think the person who goes out to shoot grey crows is wrong. Along with others, they want to continue attacking rural Ireland. Let us take the deer for example. People are now realising that we have an overpopulation of deer in this country. We have to reduce the figure by 75%. This is management of rural Ireland. You cannot just leave everything go as it is. If the Deputies had their way, they would do away with live exports, pig farming and the whole idea of people rearing chickens and all of that. They are against any type of farming, including intensive dairy farming. I heard Deputy Paul Murphy talking about this cruel and barbaric affair. He does not seem to care at all about what the foxes do and the cruelty they inflict on other animals. Members spoke about badgers earlier on. Do they realise that our senior Minister is engaged on the most important issue of protecting our herd from TB at the moment? --- 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/dail/2025-12-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-17