Jennifer Whitmore
Wicklow · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Minister for justice recently brought in reforms for the criminal justice legal aid system. While we all recognise that there is a need for reform within the system, the reforms that the Minister has brought in are ill-considered, not backed up by data or evidence and have led to absolute chaos in the courts system.”
“Hundreds of jurors were recently told that their services were no longer required. Many vulnerable people in the legal system are falling through gaps.”
“A hosepipe ban will come into force in a number of counties on the east coast from tomorrow. I completely understand that because we are seeing record temperatures and are in the middle of dealing with the climate crisis and climate change.”
“In 2024, 1,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour were recorded on Dublin Bus. That was nearly double the figure recorded just a few years earlier. Unfortunately, this is not just limited to Dublin. We are also seeing instances of this in my constituency, Wicklow, on Go-Ahead services.”
“More than 1,000 people died in Spain due to heat-related causes in June of this year alone. By early July, Spain had 14 major forest fires and 50,000 ha of land had been burned. Across Europe, more than 10,000 excess deaths associated with the recent heatwave were recorded in a single week. These warnings have to be taken seriously.”
“As a family member, you wonder if the person is getting care, whether they are being fed properly and whether they are being looked after. There is no visibility. There is a dementia care home in Shankill that a lot of people from my constituency use, St. Joseph's. It is incredible. I visited it recently.”
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“I raise a new special school that was announced for St. Fergal's in Bray. It was welcome news when this school was announced earlier this year. It will accommodate 18 to 24 students, beginning in September 2026. However, there has been radio silence about the school since. There has been no information for parents about how to apply and whether they will get places. The Taoiseach knows that children need to be prepared to start school in September. Indeed, parents have work to do to get a child ready for school. It is completely unacceptable that there has been no information locally about how parents can apply and whether they will get places in this school. I would appreciate it if the Taoiseach would raise that with the Minister.”
“In Ireland, 90% of protected habitats are in an unfavourable conservation condition. Ireland ranks one of the lowest in the world when it comes to nature intactness and we also spend, as a percentage of our GDP, one of the lowest amounts among countries in Europe. The Government has an Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund but the independent body that was set up to look at nature restoration has estimated it is going to cost €450 million to €700 million a year to roll out nature restoration plans in Ireland. However, there is no money currently ring-fenced for that under the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. This is something I raised so many times with the previous Government and with the previous Minister. Funds needed to be ring-fenced for nature protection and restoration under the fund.”
“In actual fact, he is playing chicken with the EU and that could cost us dearly environmentally, socially and other in other ways.”
“Yet another damning report from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, today that shows the Government is utterly failing to reduce emissions by the amount it committed to. For something that Taoiseach claims is an existential crisis, it is incredible how poorly his Government is at dealing with it. The EPA report makes clear that, at absolute best, the Government is on track to make 50% of the emissions reductions to which it has committed. That could cost us hugely. It is estimated that it could cost us up to €28 billion in European fines. I know the Taoiseach firmly does not believe that Europe is going to fine us that amount of money. In the absence of any information from Europe or any evidence to support his claim, however, that is a really high-risk strategy he is taking.”
“Trust, once lost, is difficult to rebuild, but it can be rebuilt through engagement, accountability and willingness to listen to the people who rely on the services every day. I hope the Minister takes all these suggestions on board. It is important that the NTA work with communities. That is how we put a really good public transport system in place.”
“This is an Irish Rail project but the NTA is the approving and overseeing authority for Irish Rail, so we need some oversight. Why was there no intervention in this instance? Before we extend the remit of the NTA any further, it is vital that it fix what is already broken. We need to start seeing genuine local engagement, not just tick-box consultation. We need to see clear, timely communication with communities and public representatives. We need to see faster, transparent responses to parliamentary questions. We need to see stronger oversight of project delivery and spending. Above all, we need to see accountability when things go wrong. Without those reforms, we are not expanding a service; we are expanding a system that people unfortunately do not trust despite its importance.”
“I understand that sometimes the long weekends are a good opportunity for staff to carry out works, but there needs to be some recognition that there are just some weekends where the service is so needed that it should be running. When we talk about extending the NTA's powers, we also have to talk about accountability because, at the moment, there are serious questions about the NTA's oversight. Just last week, we learned that Irish Rail effectively had to write off €50 million on a failed IT project, a traffic management system that was meant to modernise the rail network. That is €50 million down the drain. It was not a minor project. It was described as central to how the railway network would be managed but it failed.”
“As I have raised previously, the issues go beyond the bus services as they also affect the DART service. I want to raise again with the Minister that there have not been replacement buses or additional Luas services put in place, but there are going to be 30,000 women taking part in the VHI Women's Mini Marathon. It is the world's largest all-women 10 km race and raises €10 million for charities every year. For the second year in a row, there is going to be no DART between Wicklow and Dublin city for the marathon. Last year, people told me there were no additional Luas or bus services and people were late to the race.”
“service because it is always late, so they had to get the 8 a.m. service. All of these small issues cause enormous problems for people. The Baltinglass crowd just did not have transport available to them and they had to hire a minibus. There are four services on the 132 bus route every day that connect Baltinglass to Dublin via Tallaght. People tell me that at least once a day one of those services is cancelled. This is a Bus Éireann service. Many times, people are left stranded in work in Tallaght with no way of getting home. People have to be able to trust the bus service in place for them. Unfortunately, there is no reliability. Where there are problems with reliability, frequency and trust, it is important that the NTA act as a go-between. It needs to understand and hear what the problems are. Unfortunately, that is not happening.”
“In August, Nolan Coaches won the tender. The company hired four drivers and got a bus but that bus is now sitting in a depot in Clonshaugh and has not yet been put into operation. The service was meant to start in September but still has not started. It is now May 2026, a year since the NTA told me the bus route was a priority and had funding. It would now appear that the funding is no longer available, and the service is certainly not operating. Let me look to west Wicklow. I had a group of students in today, some of whom were from Blessington and some of whom were from Baltinglass. The Blessington group had to get the 65 bus from Blessington to the Dáil. It took them two and a half hours although it is a 50-minute journey by car. They were telling me about the problems. They could not get the 9.30 a.m.”
“The NTA said it could not meet the principals because, if it did that, it would have to meet everyone. Maybe that is the point. Maybe it should be meeting them. The principals I have referred to represent 4,000 people. It would have been worthwhile for the NTA to sit down and hear exactly what gaps were in the service and potentially what it could do. I realise it cannot address this overnight but it is important for it to hear what the gaps are. When we have a system that is made so centrally and rigidly, it causes a lot of difficulties. I will give some examples. I have spoken many times in here about the 199 bus, a Local Link bus that was to go from Glendalough through Laragh and Roundwood to Bray. It was announced in April 2025. In May, I was told it was fully funded and that it was a priority service. In July, it went out to tender.”
“The NTA in its current form is too distant, too rigid and too centralised. Simply put, it is not local enough. This Bill will go some way to help in this regard. The authority is not embedded in the communities it serves and it is increasingly seen as a large, unresponsive bureaucracy. Decisions are being made about towns and villages by an organisation that does not understand how they work. This is a major issue. I see it every day in my constituency of Wicklow. In Greystones, four school principals are representing over 4,000 students and families. I asked the NTA to sit down and meet them because Greystones is very much a growing town and the needs of many of the schoolchildren who use the buses are not being met by the current bus service. We were trying to resolve that issue.”
“The new battery electric DART to Wicklow town was first promised in 2019 by then Minister, Shane Ross. His expectation was that Wicklow would see that electric DART by 2023. In 2021, a local Government backbencher stated that the carriages would be operational by 2025. In 2022, the former Minister, Stephen Donnelly, announced that the electric DART would be operational by 2026. In February 2025, the date was pushed back to 2028. Last year, it was pushed back again to 2029. It was announced last month that Irish Rail had gone out to tender for this battery electric DART extension. Will the Taoiseach confirm that it is still the case that the DART will be operational by 2029?”
“In December we brought forward a Bill and Government Ministers, on the floor of this Dáil, asked us not to bring that Bill to a vote because they wanted to work with us on it. I have had no communication regarding the Bill in the last five or six months. That is not good enough.”
“Yesterday the Government announced new rules and legislation regarding puppy farming. This is very welcome because for far too long, this and previous Governments have ignored animal welfare issues. However, there is a glaring omission in the legislation and that is the mention of a cap. Is it still the case that puppy farms will be able to have 300 female dogs breeding on site and potentially thousands of pups? If it is, then that is a huge flaw in the legislation. Last December the Social Democrats brought forward a Bill that had a cap included. The Taoiseach has been talking about cheap politics here today and he is constantly talking about how the Opposition does not offer positive solutions.”
“We need to have that understanding of the food web and the ecological cycle but we need to make our villages and towns open to nature. I ask the Minister of State to pass that on to the Minister.”
“We have become very good at the engineering aspects of our lives to the detriment of nature and there are ways we can make our homes, schools, villages and towns a lot more nature-friendly - I refer to bee bricks and swift bricks - to ensure that when there are new developments, it is native hedgerows that go in there and not species that just do not belong there. There is so much we can do because I think we have become very isolated from nature, particularly in urban communities. If we see ants, our first instinct is to get rid of them. We go straight for the pesticides we can get down in the local supermarket. All that kind of stuff has to stop. We need to learn to live with these species. I go out into my garden and I see midges everywhere and I love it, because I know all those midges in my garden are feeding the bats and the birds.”
“His programme was very interesting in looking at how we can incorporate and facilitate nature to be a part of our cities and towns. Over the past number of years, we have cemented it out and got rid of it. We have created homes and communities where nature is not welcome or it cannot find a place. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, on one hand, is doing fantastic work with retrofitting homes but, at the same time, that retrofitting seals a home so species like swifts can no longer find their little nooks and crannies. I brought that to the SEAI's attention previously and it said it would look into that.”
“For any distributor or garden centre that is caught or found to be selling these, there needs to be sanctions. We have to protect what we have here. Identifying that a species is problematic and seeing the absolute havoc a species like that can cause down in Killarney National Park and still allowing for it to be sold does not make any sense to me at all. I have a couple of minutes left. I know Derek Mooney has been in the media a lot for not-so-positive reasons but I wish to acknowledge and mention his documentary, which I have been looking at this week, about urban nature. This is an area we tend to forget as well. I think we see nature as something that is separate from us, out in the country and is only a rural thing but nature is all around us.”
“I heard him talk this morning about an invasive species bureau, which is a very good idea, but there are some very simple things that need to happen immediately. We cannot allow the sale of invasive species in this country, on the one hand, and then at the same time have these invasive species causing huge destruction in certain areas with the State spending millions trying to get rid of them. It does not make sense. Rhododendron ponticum should not be sold in this country, and anyone selling it should face sanction. Cherry laurel is another species that is causing incredible problems and difficulties and yet you can still buy it. It should not be for sale. I know there are a number of species that are actually illegal for sale in Ireland but which are still being sold.”
“You have different landowners, competing agendas and competing needs. It is difficult, but there are some quick wins that the Minister of State could make in relation to protecting biodiversity that are within his remit. I know the Minister of State is a birder, and he is essentially responsible for them, so I am surprised that we still have red- and amber-listed birds that are hunted every year. The Minister of State signs the open hunting season order on those, but I ask that he consider not allowing any endangered birds to be hunted, because that is counterintuitive. The Minister of State also allows for the capture and coursing of protected species. Again, that should not be allowed.”
“We need to have a discussion about whether we need highly protected areas within our national parks that do not have walking tracks, car parks or coffee shops, and are not purely for recreation. That discussion absolutely has to happen. I do not believe we have even begun to consider that. Many of the things the Minister of State has talked about when it comes to funding are looking at footbridge upgrades, trail upgrades and maintenance, and redevelopment of carparks. As I have said, these are important, but at present we are not getting the protection piece right. We are getting the recreation piece right, but the protection piece has not been considered sufficiently. I ask that this be brought to the Minister of State, because he has had to leave the Chamber. Much of this stuff is long-term and very complex.”
“Many of our national parks are farms with no additional protections within them. They are just lines drawn on a map, given a title and a place on a very lovely website. I am not sure whether, from a nature perspective, they are actually helping things. We should be having a discussion not only about what role the national parks play, but also about the balance within the national parks and their role. Many of them have become and are designed as recreational areas for communities and people to enjoy, and that is very important. We need these educational facilities and places where people can go and connect with nature to understand and enjoy it, but they also need to be places where protection is involved.”
“It struck me as I listened to the Minister of State's speech, in which he outlined and listed all the national parks we have in Ireland - indeed, we have seen some very welcome increases in the national parks - that I am not sure we have really defined or identified what role our national parks should play. That is a key problem. When people hear about a "national park", they think of nature, protection and a safe place for nature to grow and be enhanced, but I do not believe we have got to that place with our national parks yet. That our national parks do not have management plans is a major concern of mine, and I have been raising it for several years now. Our national parks need to be areas where biodiversity and nature protection are the top priority, but unfortunately, that is not the case.”
“We are in a bad place, but I recognise that some measures being put in place at present are seeing positive results. The Minister of State spoke about the corncrake and curlew projects that are in place. There are certainly good signs and positive movement coming from that. I acknowledge the Minister of State's passion in this area, in which he has worked for a long time. Certainly, a huge part of his life is spent enjoying and appreciating nature. Considering where we are and the difficulties we face, I think there is considerable work ahead. When the Minister of State spoke earlier, he referred to the national parks and the NPWS. I recognise the incredible work done by the NPWS. The people in there are very passionate about the environment, and that is why they are in that job.”
“I welcome the opportunity to mark National Biodiversity Week. I want to first set the baseline. Where we are at present when it comes to nature and biodiversity in Ireland is not a good place. A total of 90% of Ireland's EU-protected habitats are in unfavourable conditions, and 51% are deteriorating. Ireland has one of the lowest levels of protected land in the EU, with only 6% being designated as SPAs and 10% as SACs. Some 14.7% of Irish species are threatened with extinction, and 2.7% are already regionally extinct. One third of bee species are threatened and two thirds of our bird species are of conservation concern, with curlews being down by 98% since the 1980s and corncrakes down by 96% since the 1970s. Just 53% of our water bodies are in satisfactory condition, and 56% of our native plant species are in decline.”
“They need to know when this bus is going to be up and running. Will the Tánaiste ensure the funding will be there? It needs to happen immediately. This has gone on way too long, with no answers from the NTA. The Tánaiste spoke earlier about how agencies should be responsive. I, and the community in Roundwood, have had very little information from the NTA. Could the Tánaiste please give an update on that?”
“This week, I went to Clonshaugh in Dublin to see what was supposed to be the 199 bus, which was meant to go from Glendalough through Roundwood to Bray. The 199 service was announced in April 2025. In May, I was told by the NTA that it was fully funded. In June, it went out for tender and in August, Nolan Coaches won that tender. It bought a bus and hired four drivers for that service. It was meant to start in September. September came and went - no bus. January came and went - no bus. March came and went - no bus. The Tánaiste can see where I am going here. There is no 199 bus, certainly none that is operating on that route. The funding would appear to have been pulled from this bus service. Many people are making very big life decisions on the basis that they need that service, whether it is to go to college or work.”
“They want her to ensure that no other woman has to do that and no other woman has to make the incredibly difficult decision with her family to terminate a baby that is wanted and loved. They do not want any other woman to have to make the decision to go to the UK to get the medical care that she requires. They do not want any other woman to have to make the decision as to whether to hide her baby in the boot of her car or to tell the ferry or airport that she is trying to bring her baby home. They do not want any other woman to have to leave her baby in the UK because she is afraid of bringing her baby back into the country illegally. They do not want any other woman or her family to have to go to Aldi to pick up ice - excuse me - so her baby can get home. They need the Minister to legislate.”
“I thank the Minister for her contribution and for meeting with us and the interim Chief Medical Officer, CMO, and the deputy CMO. She has gone through all of the reasons this is not going to work. She gave technical details. However, we can agree on the principle of what we are trying to achieve. We want this to go to the next Stage where we can have that in-depth discussion. We need to bring the experts before the committee. We need to bring people with lived experiences before the committee. We need to have this discussion in committee and that is why we are asking the Minister to support this Bill. I know it is complicated and complex, but the 240 women who had to travel for terminations outside the State last year do not want the Minister's empathy. They want her to legislate.”
“Crucially, our plan also addresses the need to roll out new technology like plug-in solar. These are practical proposals that would cut bills, reduce emissions and insulate households from future shocks. Energy security is about more than just affordability. Energy security is national resilience. Transparency needs to lie at the heart of everything we do. Without it, public trust will be lost, if it is not already. Irish people are being asked to pay the highest electricity prices in Europe while being told everything is working as it should, that prices are fair and everything is fine. This simply does not add up.”
“In the face of this cost-of-living crisis, the Social Democrats have proposed a targeted €400 energy credit for households with low-to-middle incomes. That is a practical and deliverable measure. It would offer direct relief to those most under pressure. However, short-term financial support is simply not enough. We also need structural change. We need to accelerate our transition to green energy and start future-proofing homes against future price shocks. The Social Democrats have a plan for that as well. Our solar for all proposal is a five-point plan that would expand and improve access to solar nationwide. It includes doubling the existing solar grant, reinstating the grant for battery storage, including free solar panels as part of the warmer homes scheme and increasing grants for businesses to install solar.”
“It did not begin in February with the USA and Israeli war on Iran. It has been going on for years. Last week, we learned in the Irish Independent that Irish households were now €2,000 a year worse off due to rising energy, grocery and health insurance costs combined. Energy is not an isolated expense, but part of the wider cost-of-living crisis that is squeezing people to breaking point. When the Minister of State and this Government tell people to wait, that relief is coming and that assistance is on the way, he can understand why people do not believe them and why their trust in this Government is eroding. EU state aid rules have been relaxed in the context of the current energy and oil crisis. Targeted price interventions have been permitted by the Commission. The Government has options, options that make this inaction inexcusable.”
“When the Government is challenged on that point, it points to the national energy affordability task force that was established last year. It keeps on saying that solutions will come later in the year, but people are struggling now. They need help now and they have needed help for months. That answer is completely unacceptable. This task force, even with the fact that it will only be reporting fully at the end of the year, has only met on three occasions between its establishment in June 2025 and February 2026. Three meetings while electricity prices climbed and climbed and more families fell into debt. That response is not reflective of the scale of this crisis. It appears to me that the Government is not taking this seriously at all. Irish households have been struggling with skyrocketing energy costs for years.”
“These are people who work hard, who do all the right things, who get up every morning and go to work, but they simply cannot keep their heads above water. All the while, wholesale electricity prices are 72% lower than they were at their peak in August 2022, yet retail prices continue to rise. If that is a well-functioning market, it is a market that is failing consumers. For many people across the country, this energy crisis is getting worse by the day. Hundreds of thousands of people are in arrears on their electricity bills. Families are being forced to make impossible choices every day between paying their bills and covering basic daily essentials. The cost-of-living increases from 2025 alone have led to an average Irish home paying €480 more per year than households in neighbouring countries.”
“The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, said earlier on that he believed there needed to be a strengthening of the mandate of the CRU. I would question exactly why he believes that the mandate should be strengthened. If the mandate of the CRU needs to be strengthened, that would imply that any investigations into things like price gouging are potentially not up to scratch or the CRU does not have enough teeth or remit to deal with them. I would be interested to hear from the Minister on exactly what additional powers he would like the CRU to have. People all over this country are being crushed by incredibly high electricity prices that are just going up and up. Over 317,000 households are now in arrears.”
“For me, that raises more questions than it answers. The CRU will appear before the climate committee tomorrow to go through the review. This is only an interim review and it is not the full investigation. The CRU states that more detailed analysis is to come. In this interim review, the CRU does not dispute that wholesale prices have fallen dramatically since 2022, that the International Energy Agency, IEA, states that those reductions were not passed on to households and that the Eurostat data states that Ireland has the highest household electricity prices in the EU. This is all still true. Yet, according to the CRU, there is nothing to see here. The market is functioning as it should. There is nothing to worry about. I just do not understand how that makes any sense.”
“That is an important and necessary change. Last month, I raised the CRU's price gouging investigation with the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley. I asked him for an update on the CRU price gouging investigation that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, had called for at the end of 2025. Yesterday, the CRU finally published its interim review. When I spoke to the Minister of State in mid-April, he had no update on what the CRU had actually done or where the CRU was at with its investigation. I find it surprising that the Minister of State did not know that the publication was just weeks away. There is a clear disconnect between the Government and the regulator. This is a concerning thing. The CRU's interim review concludes that it has found no evidence of excess profitability or price gouging by suppliers.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for introducing this Bill. The Social Democrats will be supporting it. Transparency in our energy pricing sector is long overdue. This Bill ensures that. It also strengthens the mandate of the CRU to actively intervene in the energy market in the name of the public interest. It places energy affordability at the heart of energy regulation. This is all very welcome. For too long, Irish households have been asked to accept price increases and to trust that those increases are justified and fair without concrete evidence that this is true. This debate goes to the heart of that problem. It is about transparency and restoring public trust in our energy sector by enhancing the CRU's reporting obligations and requiring regular published data on retail prices, supplier margins and price changes.”
“Ireland is one of the lowest rank countries when it comes to protecting nature. A total of 90% of protected sites are in unfavourable condition. It is going to cost hundreds of millions of euro to restore nature across this island. Where will that funding come from? Is the Taoiseach having any conversations at a European level about funding nature restoration?”
“It is economically illiterate for this country to sit on €500 million that has been set aside for climate action and not spend it while at the same time looking at funding renewable energy projects in other countries to make up for the fact that we have not done enough on climate in this country. It is crazy. Will the Taoiseach please explain his rationale on that?”
“Half a billion euro has been left unspent when it comes to climate action measures. We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, in the middle of incredible energy shocks, where people cannot afford to pay their electricity bills. We need to have a debate on how the Government is going to spend that money. The Social Democrats have proposed a solar-for-all scheme and a targeted energy scheme. We need to see some movement on this. Can we have a debate on the matter?”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“Could he provide me with an update with the progress that has been made, perhaps in relation to the stakeholder group, the public consultation and where he sees this legislation going forward?”
“I agreed and was very happy to agree to work with the Minister of State, Deputy Grealish, on it. We have a timed amendment on it. A commitment was made that we would work closely on the Bill to see if we could actually come up with something through consultation and engagement, something that will help protect and regulate puppy farms in order that we have much greater confidence in them. I want to see a cap on the number of dogs that can be on site and the conditions in which they are held. Could the Minister give me an update on any progress on that? I have had one meeting with the Minister of State but unfortunately there was no progress at that point.”
“These organisations do incredible work in filling in those gaps and ensuring that, where they can, they absolutely assist any puppies or any families looking for dogs who cannot be homed through normal means, or, when they are homed cannot live in a family home and have to be rehomed because the family cannot look after them. One of the things that I found very interesting when I was researching my Bill on this previously was when I spoke to behaviouralists and vets. When a dog with behavioural issues comes in to them, they can identify exactly which puppy farm that animal has come from because it is either genetic issues or issues with the environment. The environment that they were born into actually causes behavioural issues that stay with that pup, sometimes for their lifetime. I brought this Bill forward in December 2025.”
“Unfortunately, there are some people who will take whatever opportunity they can to make as much money out of pups and puppy farming. Therefore, that is where the Government comes in to regulate these operations. Unfortunately, the current legislation is not sufficient to regulate them properly or to put enough safeguards in place. What we have are instances where hundreds of breeding females could be on site with no statutory limits on the number of staff required to look after them. The conditions they are in are often absolutely horrific. That is a side of puppies that people do not see when they buy them. They do not see where that puppy came from and started its life and the awful conditions that the puppy may have potentially been born into. I also tend to spend a lot of time looking on rescue Facebook and Instagram pages.”
“I thank and acknowledge the Minister for being here today. I have often spoken in this House about animal welfare, particularly puppy farms and the regulation of dog breeding. One of the things that we can agree on in this House is that Ireland is a nation of dog lovers. If the Minister goes down any street, he will find someone out walking their much-loved dog. They form a huge part of our homes and our families. Unfortunately, there are far too many people in this country who are not dog lovers, and, in fact, see dogs and puppies as a commercial opportunity. They will breed as many puppies as they possibly can to try to make unbelievable amounts of money in some instances. I was just looking on one of the websites that showed the most gorgeous pups. Some of them are going for approximately €2,500.”