Support the Bill to ban hare coursing in Ireland

Hares are a protected species in Ireland and an national symbol.

Prior to a hare coursing event the hares are collected in a cruel manner using nets and then stored in horrendous conditions most likely in small boxes until they are released into a field and chased and mauled by greyhounds.

Animal rights organisations have secretly documented and evidenced the cruel methods in collection and storing of the animals.

Clare Daly, a TD for Dublin North – the only Dublin constituency, she says, which still has hare coursing events – told the Dail recently that the Irish Council Against Blood Sports has a video of barbarity in Balbriggan.

Daly says that the rules around hare coursing are contradictory where, on the one hand, hares are protected under the Wildlife Act but, on the other, under the Animal Health and Welfare Act all animals are protected with the exception of hares to be coursed.

She said that this resulted, in 2015, in a situation where 7,000 hares were taken from the wild to be used in live coursing events. While Creed said the figures show that in 2014-15 99.3% of hares are released back into the wild, Daly said it was often to die.

“Reports from the National Parks and Wildlife Service… tell us that only 17 of the 75 events held in the country last year had National Parks and Wildlife Service officials in attendance and the state of many of the hares requiring assistance, which were released back to the wild distressed, is evident in its reports, which refute the information given to the Minister by Bord na gCon.”

Many hares, she said, which are released back into the wild, were very distressed and die afterwards.

Creed said that under legislation ensured a prohibition on the coursing of sick or pregnant hares and a requirement that hares be released back into the wild during daylight hours.

However, Daly said at a coursing event in Nenagh, some of the hares released included heavily pregnant hares.

Daly said the solution is to ban coursing outright, but Creed said he has no intentions to do so.

Ireland is one of only 3 countries in Europe that allow this barbaric so called sport take place.

Does this have a place in a caring and compassionate modern Ireland?

For the last 25 years independent TD's have attempted to and failed to have this act banned in the Dail.

Supporters call it tradition, a tradition where grown men stand in a field and cheer whilst watching animals be terrorised and mauled.
The word tradition is used too often to for justification for terrible acts.

How can we as a nation condemn other countries for animal cruelty like bull fighting and whale hunting when we accept this in our own lands.

TD's should firstly be allowed to vote with their conscious and not with the whip and the government who has given its support to the continuation of hare coursing.

Its important that we send a strong message to the government that it is not acceptable in a caring and compassionate Ireland that cherishes its protected species.