Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“Pico Lopes put it clearest when he arrived back in Ireland from the World Cup: "Some things are bigger than football ... The game for me has to be stopped. It shouldn't be played". Tonight, delegates at an FAI extraordinary general meeting will vote on whether Ireland should play Israel. I hope the delegates do the right thing, which is to say that a state like Israel, which is engaged in genocide and apartheid, should be isolated, not played. Will the Taoiseach assure the delegates that if they do the right thing by not playing the game, the Government will step in to ensure there is no loss to Irish football as a result?”
“They are not running for the laugh; they are running because they are utterly terrified by dogs that are ten times their size. Third, I come back to the question of the report. It is very troubling that in the debate the Government relied on a figure from a report that has not been produced, cannot be analysed and cannot be scrutinised.”
“The Taoiseach says you have to bring people with you, but the people are miles ahead of the politicians on this one. In today's poll, when you exclude the undecided, 74% of people support a ban on hare coursing. In the poll a number of years ago, it was 77%, and higher in rural areas than in urban areas. The problem the people often face is that they have to try to drag the politicians with them because this place remains an outlier compared with society at large, where there is potentially going to be a majority support for hare coursing. Second, we have heard again and again that this industry is highly regulated. The whole essence of the thing is terrorising hares. It does not have animal welfare at its heart. Despite what a Fine Gael TD tried to suggest in the debate on Thursday, the hares actually do not enjoy it.”
“When asked by The Journal , the Irish Coursing Club refused to provide this report, supposedly because it has to be presented to the club's members first - four years after it was written. So, we have a report, apparently produced in 2022, with an unbelievable finding of a value of over €70 million for hare coursing, which conveniently has not been published in four years, so nobody can actually scrutinise it. It is all a bit mysterious, would the Taoiseach not agree? Has he seen this report? Does he agree that if it exists at all, it needs to be published before the vote so that TDs can assess for themselves the supposed economic benefit of continued cruelty and barbarism towards Irish hares?”
“There is a troubling part of the debate on this issue so far which needs to be cleared up before TDs vote tonight. In the debate on Thursday, the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, said, "In 2022, an independent economic analysis estimated that coursing contributed approximately €70.7 million annually to the Irish economy." The same figure was repeated on the airwaves by other Fianna Fáil TDs and by the Irish Coursing Club. This, however, is a very elusive report, shyer than the hare itself. It was supposedly done in 2022 but was not mentioned literally anywhere until last week. Parliamentary questions were asked in 2025 and this report was never mentioned.”
“We know that many Fianna Fáil TDs have told constituents that they are opposed to hare coursing and want to vote against it. What is the Taoiseach's position? Is he personally in favour of hare coursing? Does he think it is okay to torture wild animals for fun or for gambling? Will he let his TDs vote with their consciences or is this a case of Fianna Fáil running with the hares and hunting with the hounds; saying one thing to one audience and then doing another thing? A new poll published this morning confirms the vast majority of people right across this country are opposed to hare coursing. We know there is no urban-rural divide on this issue despite what the tiny minority of people who enjoy torturing animals try to make out.”
“I will start by paying tribute to the Creagh Lane abuse survivors who have had to fight tirelessly, although they should not have had to, for justice in the face of a conspiracy by the church and a cover up and absolute obstruction by the State. Tonight, TDs will have an opportunity to ban the barbaric practice of hare coursing; to join the North and the rest of Europe in saying that terrorising animals is not entertainment or sport; to stop thousands of Irish hares being captured from the wild every year, crammed into crates and then into enclosures with other hares despite them being solitary animals; and to then make them run for their lives from dogs that are ten times their size and with hares being pinned to the ground, thrown into the air and killed every single year.”
“It is always about kicking the vulnerable and the poor. The motion points out that the number of residential places has still not been restored to pre-2008 levels and that an additional 3,900 residential places will be needed just to achieve that. If the Government cannot care for disabled people now, when it has billions of euro in surplus, when is it ever going to do it? The answer is never, unless it is forced to by campaigns like this one. The absence of State care was what prompted so many carers and disabled people to angrily reject the so-called care referendum, with its mealy-mouthed wording about striving to support family care. Carers have had enough of "Aren't ye great?" The Government needs to stop talking and start acting and develop a plan to implement all of the actions outlined in this motion.”
“It cannot just be allowed to pass because being seen to oppose it would be too embarrassing for the Government and then left on the shelf alongside everything else the Government knows it should do but will not because its priorities lie elsewhere. If the mark of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, then the lack of care shown towards adults with intellectual disabilities marks this State as a profoundly uncivilised one. Successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, in power since the foundation of the State, have failed abysmally to care for people with intellectual disabilities. They have been the first group targeted for cuts and the last to have funding restored. This is what the Government means when it talks about hard choices. It is never about targeting about the rich or the powerful.”
“I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this good motion and the Before We Die campaign for putting this on the political agenda. For too long adults with intellectual disabilities and their parents have faced the future with dread, not knowing what will happen to them after their parents pass away. The awful fear is that after they die, the adult child will go from a life where the best care has been lovingly provided by their parents to an uncertain, unplanned and even chaotic future. Over 2,000 adults with an intellectual disability are living with parents aged 70 or older, including 500 whose parents are over 80. This motion is urgent.”
“That is no way to treat people who were working directly for the State before being transferred to An Post. They have been left in a situation of deepening and worsening pension poverty. We all know what the rates of inflation have been over the past few years. Two of the workers, Mr. Paul Moreland and Mr. John Hearn, appeared before the Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport in May. They put the case extremely well in terms of how poorly An Post pensioners are being treated. That situation must be rectified.”
“Regarding An Post pensioners, we have a scandalous situation where workers who transferred over to An Post and gave huge service to the company and to the communities they served were given guarantees about the value of their pension not being diminished and so on. All those guarantees, which supposedly exist in law, have been broken and now they are going into pension poverty. There is an incredible situation whereby a cap on these pensions means they can rise by only 2% a year. The cost-of-living crisis we have seen over recent years has led to people's real income being massively eroded, and workers are expected to just accept it. If we continue on the trajectory we are on, the State pension, inadequate as it is, will actually surpass the An Post pension for many workers.”
“There are other issues with sorting offices across the country, but this is a major issue. There will be a large meeting in Tallaght on Monday night. We will then propose to bring the campaigns together and protest outside the Dáil in September to show that this is not acceptable. Fundamentally, this is a political issue. The Minister of State needs to tell An Post it is not a runner and does not make sense. To be clear, the buildings where the sorting offices are currently located are fully operational. Ironically, after moving the Edmondstown office to Lucan the plan is to move a Dublin 14 sorting office, currently located in Churchtown, to the old building. From the point of view of workers and residents, this proposal, which I believe is about prioritising Amazon over people, needs to be dropped.”
“We will hold a public meeting next Monday night in Tallaght, which I believe will also be well attended. The result is that the campaign is having an impact. An Post has now said that, due to time constraints, it is staggering the consolidation of Fonthill in Tallaght. It also said that because it would take a number of weeks for the offices to settle in the new surroundings so close to the very busy Christmas peak period, it has taken the decision to defer the move of the Edmondstown and Tallaght sorting offices to quarter 1 of 2027. We have forced back the decision, but this is not the answer. Going back to quarter 1 of 2027 provides a six-month reprieve. The move was to happen in quarter 3 of 2026. That is not what we are looking for. The plan has to go off the table.”
“She said she relies on being able to access postal services close to home and that travelling further to collect missed deliveries or resolve delivery issues would be extremely difficult. She said caring for a child with additional needs already involves attending appointments, managing therapies and balancing many daily responsibilities. Without access to a car, she said, any additional journey by public transport or on foot creates extra stress and practical challenges, in particular when travelling with her child. This is a huge issue and it is why in Dublin 16 we had a well-attended public meeting and, a few weeks ago, a very well-attended protest. Over 4,000 people have signed a petition against the move of the Dublin 16 post office, and we are just getting started with the campaign in Tallaght.”
“The inconvenience will be immense. An Post has said behind the scenes that it will make arrangements with local post offices to make sure packages can be collected. We have spoken to local post offices that have told us they do not have the space or opening hours to do that and that there has been no contact with them to make this happen. We are being lulled to sleep by An Post saying not to worry and that this will be fine, but ultimately it will not be fine. A mother living in Dublin South-West spoke about the impact of this on her. She is the parent of a child with additional needs. She does not drive and said having a local An Post delivery office is not simply a convenience but essential.”
“Post and packages will go back to Lucan at the end of the day. The service for residents in Tallaght and Dublin 16 will be worse. The biggest issue, however, is one the Minister of State can imagine himself. People miss deliveries; we all do. We know our local sorting office because it is the place we go to get a package when it has been missed and we get a delivery slip. People living in Tallaght or Dublin 16 who miss a package will have to travel to Lucan. It is crazy. People who do not have a car will have to take a bus from Rathfarnham or Tallaght into town and out to Lucan, and back again, a journey of two to three hours. Even those in a better situation who have a car will find it hard. It is difficult enough for people to go to sorting offices to collect parcels, never mind driving all the way to Lucan.”
“The new hub is 17 km from the Edmondstown sorting offices and 11 km from the one in Tallaght. For workers who do not drive, that is out. Even if they do drive, their quality of life and life at work will get worse. A large proportion of the working day will be spent sitting on the M50 on the way to and from Lucan, rather than primarily delivering post, talking to people, etc. People will spend hours of their working day in traffic as opposed to delivering post. The impact on residents will be a dramatically worsened service. More staff will have to be involved in delivery, and in theory that is something that can be done. The issue that we cannot take account of, however, is that the traffic on the M50 is different on any given day. On some days there will be a big pile-up on the M50 and, therefore, routes will not be completed.”
“The Minister of State took a Topical Issue from the TDs in our constituency. I had to miss it for some good reason. The Topical Issue was about the move of the sorting office in Edmondstown, which serves Dublin 16, to a superhub in Lucan, coincidentally beside the Amazon warehouse, supposedly to prioritise parcels. Added to that, also in our constituency, is the move of the Tallaght sorting office from the centre of Tallaght to the superhub in Lucan. The communities are up in arms about it, and rightly so. This will be a disaster. It will be a disaster for workers. Workers have told us they live in the area and do not drive a car. They cycle to the sorting office and then do their route, and will not be able to travel from Dublin 16 to Lucan on a daily basis.”
“I welcome the Bill and the additional investment in An Post. There is a fundamental problem with An Post and it is why week after week we hear Deputies rightly complain in here about post offices closing, sorting offices moving and the terrible treatment of pensioners in An Post. The fundamental issue at the heart of it all is the so-called commercial mandate for An Post. An Post has to legally behave like a company that is solely focused on profit despite the reality that it is a public and community service and should be seen as such, and that should be its priority. Because it is not, many decisions are taken to the detriment of workers, communities and pensioners. I want to talk about two aspects of An Post. One is the relocation of sorting offices and the other is the treatment of An Post pensioners.”
“I move amendment No. 16: In page 5, between lines 36 and 37, to insert the following: “Prohibition on sale or offer for sale in State of certain services 7. (1) It shall be an offence to sell or offer for sale to a person in the State a service provided, or to be provided, in an illegal settlement in a postal code to which this Act applies. (2) A person who commits an offence under this section is liable— (a) on summary conviction, to a fine of €5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both, (b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding— (i) €125,000, or (ii) where the value of the service concerned, including the duty and tax payable on them, is greater than €250,000, three times that value, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or both.”.”
“It is important the Irish Government, the State and all of us do everything in our power to call for the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya. The healthcare workers and Doctors Against Genocide are talking about taking action next week, which will be really welcome and important in terms of trying to raise international pressure on this issue.”
“He has suffered months of torture, solitary confinement, starvation and the withholding of essential medicines. His lawyer visited him on Thursday last and said he did not recognise him. His face was battered and he could barely speak or breathe. Psychologically, he is being irrevocably damaged. If he survives physically, he will have gone past the point of regaining normal functioning. He told his lawyer he is beaten daily with rods and hammers and that he was brought to this new torture dungeon so they can kill him. In his own words, he said, "This is the last time you will see me." This man is a paediatrician; a children’s doctor. He is being tortured mercilessly for publicly not abandoning his patients to genocide. What encapsulated, concentrated horror.”
“I support this amendment and our similar amendment No. 4, which substitutes "may" with "shall". In theory, and I accept this is not the intention of the Government, and for the benefit of the public, it is true that we could pass this Bill and it could become law. However, if there was an election, resulting in an even worse Government if it is possible to conceive of that, a Minister could decide not to do this. If we are passing a law, let us make it obligatory on the Government to carry it out. As I think this is part of the argument for sanctions on Israel, I want to take a moment to mention, as Deputy Coppinger did, the condition of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. People will remember him. His only crime was not to abandon his patients during the genocide. The reports from a couple of days ago on his condition are absolutely horrifying.”
“Therefore, the Government’s official line is that we will become partially compliant and that people do not need to worry because the EU will do the meaningful thing later down the line. However, as everyone knows, that will not happen in a short period of time. That is just kicking the can down the road where it is not going to move forward because the political establishments in many other European counties are far closer and sympathetic to Israel than our Government.”
“To emphasise the point made by other Members, this raises the question over the constitutionality of what the Government is doing here. Article 29.3 of the Constitution commits Ireland to accepting the principles of international law "... as its rule of conduct in its relations with other States." Yet, the Government is introducing a Bill that it acknowledges will not bring Ireland into compliance with international law. Far from being one of the core principles of Irish foreign policy, as the Department of foreign affairs puts it, we are actually going against it. We are saying that we have to do this to be in compliance with international law but it does not suit us politically to do that as this stage.”
“The Minister of State made a point of saying that the ICJ does not require member states to do anything. Therefore, it is up to member states how they chose to act and whether they make a distinction between goods and services. In the regulatory impact analysis from the Minister of State’s Department, it stated that, "The only reasonable reading of the 2024 ICJ advisory opinion is that a complete prohibition on trade with Israeli settlements is required". The Minister accepted that on Committee Stage and, like the Minister of State, used phrases like "This Bill is moving us towards compliance" and "With this Bill, we will be partially compliant". All of that is an acceptance that we will not be in compliance with this Bill. We are either in compliance with international law or we are not.”
“The Government is proposing a Bill supposedly predicated on the ICJ ruling, which is going to continue to have us in breach of international law because we are going to continue to allow trade in services with these illegally occupied territories. It goes back to the fundamental point that none of the legal arguments here make any sense whatsoever. This is all about politics and US interests. It is shameful that those interests are being put first, and for me it underlines the fact that we need to continue to mobilise and to continue to pressure for services to be included even after this Bill. More fundamentally, it is not just the illegally occupied territories that we should be stopping trade with. We should be stopping trade with the entire apartheid, genocidal State of Israel.”
“I thought a particular engagement at the committee between Deputy Ó Laoghaire and the Minister was really interesting. Deputy Ó Laoghaire asked her, "Is she ultimately accepting that [with this Bill] Ireland would not be in full compliance with the ICJ judgment?" The Minister replied, "I have said very clearly that this would go towards compliance, but the two-pronged approach is absolutely what would make us fully compliant". The Minister went on to say, "We are working and taking actions to be fully compliant. The intention is to be fully compliant, not partially compliant." Being partially compliant with international law is a little like being a little bit pregnant. We are either in breach of international law or we are in compliance with it.”
“The problem with the Government's argument is that the ICJ ruling makes no distinction between goods and services. Later on, the Government suggested that there is some sort of distinction here in terms of the public policy exemption and that somehow this only applies to goods and not to services even though all the legal experts, even those who disagree with this Bill, all agree that such a distinction is absolute nonsense. The public policy exemption either applies to both or applies to neither. The result is the Government has got itself into this position whereby it is going to implement law, supposedly to bring us in line with the ICJ ruling, but which it acknowledges is not actually going to bring us into compliance with international law.”
“We know that in 2020 Amazon was found to be offering free shipping to illegal settlements but not to their Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank. Multinational corporations here, or with operations here that trade with the settlements include Airbnb, Etsy, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Barclays, Motorola, RE/MAX Holdings and Booking.com. All these companies and all this trade is going to be able to continue. It fundamentally contradicts the Government's own position, which is that it could not do anything until the ICJ ruling. The ICJ ruling changes everything because it says that all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings and prevent trade or investment relations with the settlements. For the Government's legal argument, that is the turning point.”
“It means even after this Bill is passed and implemented, assuming that the Government is going to reject all of our amendments, people in Ireland will still be able to go onto Airbnb and see advertised a "warm and lovely community settlement" in an Israeli settler village, Tekoa, with no mention of course of the violence against the Palestinian village of Tuqu', and no mention of the dispossession that has taken place and the violence that continues to maintain this "warm and lovely community settlement." It means Booking.com will be able to continue to list settlement properties in the West Bank. From 2018 to 2020, they tripled from 26 to 70. It tripled its East Jerusalem listings to 39 in the year before October 2023. There is the continuation of potentially buying good in terms of Amazon.”
“The Government's way of dealing with it is to say it is doing it, and try to send a signal to the movement and to popular opinion that it is taking action, while simultaneously saying to US companies, "Don't worry, none of you are actually going to be affected by this. It is not actually going to be in any way significant." It is really shameful to put the interests of Donald Trump and big US multinationals before public opinion, before promises made before the general election and before, most importantly, standing up against apartheid, genocide and the reality of what this Israeli State is and what these occupied territories are about. What does this mean in real terms?”
“That is what is happening here. There is no clearer example of this than what was revealed by The Ditch . The then US ambassador, Claire Cronin, contacted the Taoiseach saying there would be consequences for US companies in Ireland if the Bill proceeded. Hours after that, the then Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, announced the Bill would be shelved for review. This directly contradicted the Attorney General's advice that amendments were sufficient. That is what this has always been about; an Irish Government that has been triangulating between public opinion and the movement for Palestinian solidarity, which has put it under tremendous pressure, and then the wishes of the US Administration and US corporations.”
“Why is that happening? We might get an answer and we might not. We never know which arguments we will get, but we might get some legal arguments today which are utterly spurious and empty. If I get time I will go through it. The reason they are so spurious and empty is because this is not about the law. There is an interesting tension between how Micheál Martin describes it and how Simon Harris describes it. Simon Harris says that he is on the side of the people and would love to do it but cannot legally, but then cannot explain why legally he cannot, whereas Micheál Martin comes out and says the truth, which is that we do not want to damage our relations with US corporations. That is the truth. We have suspended independent foreign policy for the benefit of US multinational corporations and for fear of offending Donald Trump.”
“I remember well the debate on RTÉ during the general election where it was kind of a quick-fire question, "Will you implement the occupied territories Bill?" With no hesitation, Micheál Martin and Simon Harris said yes. There was also then someone with a camera phone who went and talked to Simon Harris in a café and asked him if he would implement the occupied territories Bill and he said, "Oh yes, no question, no ifs or buts. This is an absolute priority for me." We had one promise made to the public during a general election and now that promise is effectively being abandoned. The occupied territories Bill, which everyone understood to mean goods and services, is now being gutted to remove the majority of trade. We know that on average, 70% of trade is in services rather than goods and that 70% is now being removed.”
“I accept it is not the intention of the Government to do this but I do find it strange. We were told on Committee Stage that the provision would be interpreted in the context of the full Long Title and that, therefore, it is about the illegal occupied territories and so on. It seems strange to me to argue that when we have a much neater way of doing things, as outlined in the amendment and as has been done by a series of other countries in Europe.”
“I will be brief because I want to get onto the meat of the debate, services. I will re-emphasise the point I made on Committee Stage. Section 5(1) of the Bill is very clear - there is no exemption that deals with this in terms of subsection (2) - and states that the importation of goods originating in a postal code to which this Act applies is prohibited. It is written very clearly. In the case of a Palestinian farmer in one of the postal codes in the Bill, according to any reasonable reading of the law, the importation of the goods from the postal code to which the Act applies is prohibited. The legislation does not specify whether it is being done through the EU-Israel Association Agreement rather than via another method. It refers to the importation of goods from the postal codes being prohibited.”
“Will Fianna Fáil Party TDs be given a free vote on Wednesday night when they get a chance to ban hare coursing? Multiple Fianna Fáil TDs have responded to constituents saying that they are utterly opposed to hare coursing. Is Fianna Fáil going to force them to vote to continue this cruel practice, where thousands of hares are captured from the wild every single year, held in little cages initially and then kept in enclosures with many other hares when these are solitary animals, all to prepare them for the point of them running for their lives? I also ask the Minister to correct the record of the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, in the debate on Thursday, where he referred to a 2022 independent economic analysis which apparently suggested a benefit of coursing of €70.7 million annually to the Irish economy.”
“I object to giving only 90 minutes to the occupied territories Bill. This is a Bill both Government parties said during the general election that they would support, and yet they are now trying to absolutely gut it. The Government parties do not want time to discuss it because they do not want that to be exposed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”