Animal Welfare
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07
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Jennifer Whitmore (SD), Wicklow

I thank the Minister. I appreciate his answer and clearly this is something he wants to drive strongly forward, so I look forward to working with him on it. It is a really important piece of work and I have always wondered why there was never any previous moves to strengthen it. It is good to hear the Minister is taking that seriously and I look forward to hopefully seeing the results and report from the stakeholder group because it is important it is taken into account in the legislation. We will wait for that process to follow.
I want to use my last minute to raise another animal welfare issue that I am finding quite disturbing at the moment. That is the number of instances of sulky racing and the impact on the horses involved in that activity. I have been sent and have seen some absolutely horrific videos of horses. One was on the N7 recently where there were five or six cars directly behind two horses that were being forced to race and the cars were flashing their lights and sounding their horns. Those horses must have been absolutely terrified to be chased in that manner on a motorway.
For the life of me, I cannot understand it. This is not the first instance; it quite frequent. There was the instance of that poor pregnant horse, Anne, that died recently following a sulky race. I just do not understand why there has not been a tightening up on these races. They have been prohibited since 1993 but we see them so often. There are certain animal welfare issues we have to stop completely. We cannot have instances where horses a being treated so inhumanely on our streets in broad daylight. There does not seem to be any stopping it. Can the Minister give me some update on what his Department is doing and what consultation he has had with An Garda Síochána on this issue?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-07