The new fees will vary in accordance with the number of breeding bitches so as to reflect the size and scale of the operation, as recommended by the working group. To that end the appropriate fee bands will be as follows: in the case of a dog breeding establishment at which six to 18 eligible bitches are kept, €400; for 19 to 30 bitches, €800; for 31 to 100 bitches, €1,600; for 101 to 200 bitches, €3,000; and a further €1,600 for each 100 bitches thereafter. The fee will be payable to the local authority and the moneys raised are intended to cover the costs of regulation and inspection. Any remaining balance will be spent on dog control in general.
The fees can be hardly considered excessive when set against the income stream from the number of breeding bitches. For example, a premises with 12 breeding bitches might conservatively be expected to produce nine litters per annum of six pups each, resulting in 54 pups. A search on the Internet will show a healthy range of prices for pedigree dogs. Akitas and bulldogs sell from €800 to €1,500 each, Kerry blues are a more modest €250 to €350 each and the popular but apparently plentiful Jack Russell sells for up to €120. These average prices appear to have come down in the past year. The proposed registration fee of €400 for a puppy farm of 12 bitches producing a modest 54 pups would equate to a cost of only €7.40 per pup. If the breeder has three times that number of bitches, and consequently three times as many pups, the registration fee would be less than €3 per pup. Such a charge could be hardly considered excessive if it ensures that the country has properly run and reputable dog breeding establishments.
When this Bill was published the Minister said his aim was to shut down back street operations. There is no doubt there are abuses in the area of dog breeding and the sale of pups, including the sale of pups bred in this country to become pets in Britain. Some of the main culprits are well known and have been named in the press. It is also true that the people in question are regarded with hostility and embarrassment by genuine dog breeders.
Therefore, I can appreciate there is a need to police and, ultimately, put these people out of business if they do not treat their animals in a responsible and fair manner. It has been suggested that as well as being well known personally, these people are also clearly identifiable because of the numbers of dogs they sell. It might be a matter, therefore, for the Irish Kennel Club to refuse to register dogs it knows to be kept in or sold from these premises.
The problem is that although their operations are illegal these people are able to operate under the radar. However, they still must sell and register their dogs which means that self regulating bodies are able to ostracise them. It is also up to people who buy dogs to ensure they buy them from legitimate breeders and see the premises where the animals are kept.
In order to obtain a broad range of views on the issue, the working group was comprised of representatives from a number of bodies, including the Veterinary Council of Ireland, the Irish Greyhound Board, the Irish Kennel Club, the Dog Breeders Association of Ireland and the ISPCA. Interested members of the public were invited to make submissions to the group by way of a notice in the national press on the 4 October 2004, thus ensuring that the process was not restrictive.
Last weekend, 300 or 400 people from Wexford visited me at my clinics, informing me they were not too happy about what is in the Bill and asking me to make representations to the Minister and to the Government. The Minister has reacted to some of the representations. We will await the amendments to be tabled and perhaps we will table more amendments between now and next Thursday to ensure the people in rural Ireland will be satisfied with the Bill when it is finally enacted.
On the issue of the dog licensing I am clearly interested in the figures given by the Minister regarding how much money is collected through the existing fees. This was an issue I constantly raised when I was a member of Monaghan County Council. After each of the elections I went through for either the council or the Dáil, I could never understand why there was so little money collected from the dog licence fee because every house I visited had at least one dog and in many cases far more. I can assure the Minister there were very few houses where there were no dogs at all. I appreciate that some of them may be strays but I would suggest that 90% of them were owner owned. Clearly little effort was made to ensure that each dog was licensed. I would have thought that the first approach to raise more money should have been to improve licence fee collection rather than increase the amount. If this was done there would be more than sufficient money available to control the sector.
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