I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." It is an honour to finally be moving this at Second Stage after the Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Hare Coursing) Bill was first introduced in 2020. It has been a long road getting to this point. This section of the road will finish next Wednesday with a vote. I will start and finish with an appeal to the public to get on to their TDs and demand they reflect the big majority opinion in this country that we should take this opportunity to ban hare coursing. This road has been going on for a very long time. This is the third Private Members' Bill to attempt to ban the barbaric practice of hare coursing. Tony Gregory tried over 30 years ago. Maureen O'Sullivan introduced her Bill in 2015 at First Stage and it was voted on at Second Stage in 2016. Now, here we are again, ten years later in 2026 as one of only three European countries that still allow this annual torture of the hare to continue. In the last 15 years, more than 65,000 Irish hares have been captured from the wild and forced to participate in barbarism all because a relatively small number of people enjoy watching animals being absolutely terrorised and some want to make money through gambling on this torture. The Irish hare is a unique subspecies of mountain hare found only on the island of Ireland. We do not have many unique animals but the hare is one of them. Its cultural status was cemented for many decades on the old Irish three pence coin. It is iconic across Irish folklore where hares were often seen as spirits of the dead, leading to a taboo against eating them. We could do with renewing and broadening that ancient taboo by banning hare coursing too. We would not be here at this step of the road, debating this today, without the tireless and Trojan work of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports, the National Animal Rights Association and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Some of their tireless activists are in the Visitors Gallery today. Countless dedicated individual activists have stuck with this day in, day out over many years. They are the best of humanity. They know what empathy is. Those who support this cruelty do not. In the last while we have seen Elon Musk, JD Vance, and other leading figures on the US far right denouncing empathy and declaring war on empathy. Musk has claimed that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy" and suggested that there is an "empathy exploit". Others are going so far as to talk about the sin of empathy. The vast majority of ordinary people will rightly think that this is bananas, and that we have plenty of empathy because empathy is a fundamental part of what makes us human. It allows us to feel solidarity with other human beings, including people we do not know, who we have never met or do not look like us, and to empathise with animals, like the Irish hare. Empathy is our natural reaction when we see videos of greyhounds ten times the size and weight of hares smashing into terrified hares, throwing them up into the air, pinning them to the ground and hurting them. Instinctively, we feel for the hare. All of the waffle we have heard in the debates in the media and that we will presumably here today from the Government benches about rural pursuits is to try to cover up and suppress that instinctive human response. The Government and Sinn Féin TDs know that in their heart of hearts too. I know many of them would vote to ban this barbaric practice if they were not being whipped into voting for it to continue. We saw with Sinn Féin a few months ago on the issue of fox hunting that TDs were whipped to vote against a ban and then shortly afterwards, thankfully, the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis voted in favour of a ban. I suspect the same breakdown of a vote at a Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis would happen now in a ban on hare coursing. Sinn Féin members would vote in support of a ban on hare coursing. There are very few people who would support fox hunting and oppose hare coursing or vice versa. If that is the position, and we will see what the position is, that is not a position that would please anybody. Sinn Féin needs to stand up and make the right decision, which is to ban hare coursing here, just as it is already banned in the North. There should be no more partitionism on this. Hare coursing in this country is a legacy of British colonialism introduced here by the British Army. To all those TDs who privately support a ban on hare coursing but will troop through the voting lobbies or, more likely, press the buttons at the seats to vote against a ban, all they really have is the coward's defence. They are just following orders. I hope that, at the very least, they will try to persuade their party leaderships that these orders go against public opinion and that a free vote should be granted. The public out there is overwhelmingly opposed to hare coursing in both rural and urban areas. There is not an urban-rural divide on this issue despite the attempts to turn it into some sort of culture war issue. In fact, the Red C opinion poll on hare coursing, which found that 77% of people were opposed to hare coursing, actually showed a slightly higher percentage of people in rural areas opposed to it than those urban areas. It was some 78% in rural compared with 76% in urban. Support for a ban in Munster, the supposed stronghold of hare coursing, was 77%, compared with 76% in Dublin. The Minister of State should not come out and tell me that rural people are the only ones who know about coursing and that they want it to continue, when the evidence suggests that, yes, they do know about it but precisely because of that, they want it to be stopped, because they have been more personally exposed and know the realities of the horrors of this so-called sport. The truth is, the vast majority of Irish people want hare coursing banned. Only 9% in the Red C opinion poll opposed a ban, or fewer than one in ten people. It has been banned in the North for over 20 years, since 2003, on conservation grounds as well as the appalling cruelty. The Assembly then voted to make the ban permanent in 2010. The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, NSPCA, supports a ban. The Irish Wildlife Trust supports a ban. The NSPCA is the foremost authority on animal welfare in this country and it should be listened to by the Government. The supporters of hare coursing may prove to be a majority in this House but they are a tiny minority of the population. It speaks to how out of touch this place is with public opinion. What is happening here is the same thing that has happened with fox hunting. A well-connected minority that wants bloodsports to continue, that enjoys making animals suffer and making money out of it, is the tail that is wagging the dog and the result is all sorts of spurious arguments that we will hear. One of those is that because coursing has gone on for a long time, it is somehow all right. The same was true of badger baiting, wild animals in circuses and fur farming, all of which have been rightly banned in this country. We do not have to accept a lazy appeal to tradition for one minute. It is worth noting, again from that Red C poll from 2019, that over 85% of over-65s supported a ban, higher than the average support for a ban of 75%. Any notion of a generational divide rooted in tradition is complete nonsense. Just because this cruelty has gone on for a long time does not make it right. In fact, it makes it all the more outrageous because it means the scale of the suffering caused to these beautiful animals over decades is truly enormous. Another baseless claim put out by the Irish Coursing Club and its supporters is that coursing areas have significantly higher hare populations than other areas and that this means, somehow, that coursing protects hares. The mechanism through which this causative link happens is not really explained but, somehow, capturing a load of hares from the wild, putting them into captivity and terrorising them is apparently good for hare conservation. The origin of this claim is a tiny sample of 135 hares taken in a small area of east Donegal way back in 2003, which was then compared with a sample of hares in another part of the country four years later in 2007, and then extrapolated to the whole country to say that hares are 18 times more common in coursing areas than non-coursing areas. To be blunt, this is junk science. Coursing advocates also claim that coursing does not really hurt because the greyhounds now wear muzzles. This is also fake news. First, there is the stress of being hunted with nets, captured and put into crates and held in captivity for months. Unlike rabbits, hares are solitary animals, so being kept in confinement with multiple other hares is extremely stressful and unnatural for them. During those months, they are trained, which causes them more stress and terror. Then, you have the coursing meeting itself. Two dogs race to see which is the fastest to turn, pin or catch the hare, within which more than 4% of hares are killed. Many more are seriously injured. If they survive all of that, they are much more likely to die after being released back into the wild than hares that have not been coursed. A study funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, although used by the supporters of hare coursing, followed up coursed and uncoursed hares. The bottom-line finding was that after six months, it could find only one out of 20 coursed hares alive, compared with eight out of 20 uncoursed hares. Even if you are one of those rare psychopaths like Elon Musk, who is devoid of human empathy and does not care about the suffering of other living creatures, it is possible, although perhaps unlikely, that you might still care about biodiversity and the survival of the ecosystems upon which we all depend to survive. That is unless you are Elon Musk and you are planning to head off to Mars. For anyone concerned about biodiversity, the impact of coursing on the Irish hare population-----
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Even Elon Musk?
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I cannot call Elon Musk a psychopath.
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If you cannot say that, what can you say?
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Thank you. I will keep going. For anyone concerned about biodiversity, the impact of coursing on the Irish hare population should be a major concern. A National Parks and Wildlife Service study indicates an eight times lower survival rate for hares after they are released from coursing. That is a significant additional stressor on wild hare populations, which are already in decline, along with most of our other native species. Those involved in the practice of coursing and capturing the hares each year know that. Every year, they are capturing fewer and fewer hares to be terrorised. When I first introduced this Bill, I was talking about over 5,000 captured per year. Now it is over 3,000 captured per year. One report of a coursing meeting in Roseberry, County Kildare, in December 2024 said that only two hares ran, with hare stocks low that year. Data from the Irish Coursing Club show this steep decline in the number of captured hares. Ten years ago, 5,348 hares were caught, compared with 3,124 in 2025 and 2026, a fall of 41%. Coursing was first halted in the North in 2002 because of evidence that hare populations there had declined by 25%, yet here in the South, it is allowed to continue seemingly no matter what. Of course, there are lots of reasons hare numbers are falling. The intensification and industrialisation of agriculture has increased the use of heavy machinery that can kill and injure hares. There are also much greater numbers of dairy cattle in particular and a reduction in the natural variety of grasses for hares to eat, due to the limited varieties of grasses being sown to increase milk yields. On top of that, rabbit haemorrhagic disease, RHD, has ravaged rabbit and hare populations across Europe, with a new, more deadly strain, rabbit haemorrhagic disease variant two, RHD2, first detected in England and Wales in 2014. One would think that all of that might have prompted at least a temporary ban to protect this supposedly protected species. That is one of the ironic things about this - the law says that hares are a protected species but, in turn, it goes on to say that people can get a licence to capture and chase after them with big dogs. Of course, the gambling, coursing and greyhound industries took precedence. They will be the final nail in the coffin for many hares. I have heard today for the first time the claim that the industry is worth €70 million annually to the Irish economy. I am intrigued about that. This may come up in the debate, but I will ask it in advance. Where does that figure come from? I looked online but could not find any source for it. The greyhound industry is usually said to be worth €120 million, and there is creative accounting happening with that figure, too. I do not understand where this figure of €70 million comes from or what study is being referred to. I suspect there is more creative accountancy that takes no account of the damage caused to families and communities by the scourge of gambling and gambling addiction. I point out that the Bill is explicit in allowing lure coursing, which is where there is a mechanical hare, as happens in Australia. I will finish with two points. The first is an appeal to Members of this House to put pressure on their parties to fight for a free vote and, in any case, to vote with their conscience. They should not vote to allow this cruel practice to continue. Second, I appeal to those outside of this House, namely, the ordinary, decent people, both rural and urban, who oppose this practice. The vote will be next Wednesday. We have time to build more pressure on TDs and parties to take this opportunity to stop hare coursing.
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Yes.
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I thank all the Deputies who participated in the debate. I will start on the point about hare coursing being highly regulated, and that we do not give that more credit to that and to the idea that animal welfare is a top priority. Let us consider what hare coursing is in essence. You can regulate it all you like - and we are in favour of more regulation - but the essence of it involves going into the wild and capturing hares who are out there living their lives. They might sometimes be brutally short lives because of nature, which is fine, but they are out there living them. You go out, you make a lot of noise, you capture them in nets and you terrify them. You put them in little crates and then you put them in enclosures with a bunch of other hares. Then you allow dogs to chase after them. Some are injured and some are killed as a consequence. That is what hare coursing is. Unless you regulate the hares out of hare coursing, which is what our Bill proposes to do, then I do not see how the Minister of State can claim that animal welfare is a top priority. The Minister of State can make the case that he is concerned about animal welfare. If animal welfare really was a top priority, however, people would not be capturing hares from the wild and allowing dogs to run after them. Let us get real about what sort of regulation we are talking about and what hare coursing involves. I want to emphasise a point. I do not know if Deputy Aird really intended to suggest that the hares enjoy it, but that is what it sounded like. Obviously, they do not enjoy it. They are not running for the craic. They are running because they think these dogs are going to kill them. They do not volunteer to be captured. They try to get away. That is why nets have to be used to catch them. They are not happy to stay there. That is why they have to be in enclosures. It is very clear that if we could ask a hare about this, it would say "No. I really would prefer if you do not engage in setting dogs on me". This brings me to the point about nature being brutal and so on, which it often is, but the difference is that humanity has evolved. We are highly evolved. We have evolved to the point of having empathy with each other, and, hopefully, with other living creatures. That is why, on a philosophical level - and I recognise that there are people with different, genuinely held opinions - it is fundamentally cruel and wrong for us to put animals through difficult, damaging and sometimes deadly situations purely for our own entertainment. I believe this to be the view that is held by the majority of people in this country. That is why, philosophically, there is something fundamentally different with regard to engaging in and supporting the continuation of hare coursing and a hare being killed in the wild. It was also pointed out that you have to be very careful to make sure that the dogs and hares are not hurt. It was good that people referred to dogs being hurt, but hares are also hurt. One can go through the reports from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and we can see how many letters I received just in respect of last season. I will go from A to Z. In Abbeydorney, four hares were hit by dogs and one was pinned to the ground. In Abbeyfeale, seven hares were hit and three were pinned. One of the pinned hares was not examined for injuries until the following day. In Ardpatrick and Kilfinnane, three hares were hit. A few days before the event there, individuals entered the hare park in an attempt to steal hares. In Balbriggan, at least one hare was hit and pinned to the ground. In Ballyduff, one hare was pinned to the ground and was examined for injuries. In Ballyheigue, four hares were caught and pinned to the ground by dogs. In Borrisoleigh, three hares suffered hits and three were pinned. One hare was found dead. In Cappoquin, six hares were hit by dogs and two were pinned. One hare died from its injuries. In Cashel, a hare suffered bruising after being pinned to the ground by a dog. In Castleisland and Millstreet, two hares were hit by dogs, and another hare was pinned with such force that an ear tag came off. In Cavan, Dungannon and Westport, five hares were hit and one was mauled into the ground. The hare that was mauled was found to have a graze on its back. In Charleville and Mallow, three hares were caught by dogs and pinned to the ground. The reality inherent in hare coursing is injuries to hares and some hares getting killed. I want to address the rural-urban divide. The Government does not have to rule by opinion poll and it does not have to go with what every opinion poll says, but we have an opinion poll says quite definitively that there is not an urban-rural divide on this issue. It says that people in rural areas are more opposed to hare coursing than people in urban areas. What is this all about suggesting that this is coming from a bunch of city slickers who do not what it is like to be in the countryside where a tiny minority of people engage in hare coursing? It is an attempt to defend the indefensible by creating a culture war barrier by saying that what is really going on is an attack on rural life. The vast majority of people in Dublin are not as separated from rural life as the Minister of State might think. Neither of my parents was born in Dublin. They came to Dublin and then they had children. I am a first-generation Dub. I spent plenty of time on farms in my childhood. I have plenty of connections to my cousins who continue to live in rural Ireland. Ireland is a small place. We are not so distant from each other. A related point is that unless someone has been to hare coursing, he or she does not really have a right to have an opinion about it. If we think about that logically, we do not apply that to other things in the world. We can know a lot about hare coursing by reading about it and watching videos of what happens on YouTube. People do not have to go and see it. I made this point on the radio earlier. I am opposed on principle to the death penalty. I have never watched an execution take place, but I know that humans killing other people with the death penalty is wrong. It is correct for people to not go to hare coursing because they do not agree with what goes on there and still have a right to have an opinion on it, including putting forward legislation to ban it. In relation to the arguments raised by Sinn Féin, the main argument seemed to be that it would drive it underground. That is interesting because it seems to accept that this is a bad thing and something that should not be happening, but that there could be more of it if it was driven underground. There is illegal hare coursing in Britain, but there is much less illegal hare coursing than there was legal coursing before, so we have some evidence of what happened. It seems unlikely that by criminalising something, we are going to create more of it. The point was also made that it would be a question of enforcement. As Deputy Coppinger pointed out, there was the call for a study and so on. The irony is that everybody knows that if there is a Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis in a few months and there is a vote on hare coursing, as there hopefully will be, and it changes its position and it supports a ban on hare coursing, all of the calls for this new independent study and so on will quickly be forgotten and its members will vote the correct way, if that happens, because the membership will push them to do it. It is really about finding justifications for not going in line with the party's membership, assuming that the vote on fox hunting and hare coursing would be very similar and not in line with the majority of Sinn Féin's voters and people who are looking to the left and who want a society based on human empathy and decency, which includes animal rights. I want to quickly address a few of the arguments that the Minister of State made. In terms of the 2023 study from the NPWS, Deputy Coppinger demolished the argument that it any way suggests that hare coursing is positive for hare populations. The reality is that only one of the coursed hares was found alive. A reference was also made to the study in Donegal from 2003, which was based on a tiny population group. I want to finish with a question for the Minister of State. The 2022 independent economic analysis that found that coursing benefits the economy by €70.7 million. I cannot find reference to it anywhere. There have been plenty of debates in the Dáil about hare coursing between 2022 and now and lots of parliamentary questions have been asked about what the economic benefit of hare coursing is. No one has ever referenced this study before. I heard it today from Deputy Peter "Chap" Cleere. It is obviously part of a speaking note and a briefing. I would like to see this study. I have Googled it, and I cannot find it whatsoever. I would genuinely be interested in this study being published and for it to be referenced. Finally, I want to encourage people to keep up the pressure, and I thank the campaigners in the Gallery. We have the benefit of almost having a full week between the debate and the vote to maximise pressure on TDs.
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