1,000 signatures reached
To: South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council, Dublin City Council and Dunlaoighre Rathdown County Council
Dublin Councils must choose dog pound services based on WELFARE & QUALITY, not cost or convenience
The 4 Dublin councils will soon be renewing their 2021 dog pound contracts.
In the interest of the public good, we want them to commit to choose the tender which is of the highest quality and offers the best standards of animal welfare, and not to simply opt to award the contract based on which one is cheapest or most convenient.
After the tenders have been awarded, we also want each council to commit to making all valid tenders received, publicly available in the interest of transparency and the public good.
Why is this important?
In recent years, the Dublin councils have only ever received one valid tender for their dog pound contracts, which was from Ashton Dog Pound & Warden Services.
Over the years, many people have come to question the standards of care and the quality of service provided at Ashton Dog Pound, particularly in light of the current garda investigation into the misuse of controlled drugs which allegedly led to the death of 2 dogs in Summer 2020, which has now resulted in arrests.
This has lead to a fundamental undermining of trust, not only in the Dublin dog pound and warden service, but in the whole public procurement process itself which has allowed a situation to continue, whereby there has been only one applicant for such a lucrative government contract.
It is very important that the Dublin councils take urgent action to restore our faith in both the dog pound services they provide and the system by which they appoint service providers.
Section 35(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2014 is subject to a public interest test, and states that information should generally be released if the public interest would, on balance, be better served by granting than by refusing to grant the FOI request.
With this in mind, we call on all 4 Dublin councils to put animal welfare at the forefront of their decision making process when choosing a dog pound service provider in 2021 and fully commit to making all tenders available after the choice has been made, so that Dubliners can see that it was indeed in the best interest of our city's dogs.