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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He did not defend it at all.
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He did not. What he did was try to misrepresent the Bill. That is what he did.
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He said there were things in the Bill that are not in the Bill, and then he implied that, really, this was part of a wider agenda of opposing rural pursuits, which it absolutely is not. However, the Minister did not actually defend it. He did not defend it because he knows it is indefensible. It is utterly indefensible. Please tell me how it is a legitimate form of the sport to tear a frightened animal limb from limb with a pack of dogs and a big gang of people on horseback. It is nothing of the sort. As for the idea that it has anything to do with pest control, seriously, it has to be the most inefficient form of pest control possibly imaginable - you get a gang of horses, dogs and all the associated things to chase one fox. The Minister is seriously putting that forward as a form of pest control. It has nothing to do with that. It was a sport of the nobility - a sadistic sport of the nobility. It is barbaric and uncivilised. How the Minister could possibly defend it is beyond me. The irony, as has already been said, is that our colonial masters, the British, who developed this, have actually banned it themselves. For some bizarre reason, however, a small group of unrepresentative people, who do not represent the majority opinion in this country, have decided to try to defend this colonial elite practice. It is bizarre. I think the Minister should step back from this and reflect the views of the majority of the people in this country to end this barbaric practice.
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