Boylan welcomes European Parliament vote for dogs and cats welfare

By Darren J. Prior

Speaking to Dublin People, Lynn Boylan Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin said that she is happy that a “really progressive position has been taken by the European Parliament” in a vote last Thursday (19th) on the proposed legislative regulation on the welfare and traceability of dogs and cats across the EU.

Lynn is a member of the parliament’s Environment Committee and had amendments passed on the legislation last week in Strasbourg.

According to Lynn:

“Thursday was a really good day and hopefully when we go into the negotiations in the coming months the European Parliament’s position is the position that will be the final law.”

She pointed out that enforcement of animal welfare laws is a huge problem, though, and unless there are enough trained professionals or personnel working in the area of animal welfare by the time the new legislation in enacted by the Oireachtas over the next couple of years that there will continue to be big animal welfare injustices in Ireland.

Highlighting the area of puppy farms and Ireland’s reputation as “the puppy farm capital of Europe” Lynn said:

“That is the problem. Different local authorities take different approaches.

“Each local authority issues the licenses to the dog breeding establishments and then they decide how often they go and inspect, whether they notify in advance of inspections.

“There is a huge disparity from one local authority to another.”

When Lynn was a Senator on the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee she initiated the research into and publication of a report on animal welfare and she and the others committee members did “a lot of work around dog welfare around Ireland and one of the key recommendations that came out was that all of the dog welfare would come under one Department.

“So that there was one single Minister responsible.

“Currently dog and animal welfare is spread across three Government Departments and that means things fall through the gaps and the enforcement isn’t what it should be.

“So that recommendation should happen.

“But at the end of the day we need proper enforcements.

“We know that around the control of dogs issues there is just not enough dog wardens at all to cover the amount of dogs that are in the country.

“We need to invest in the personnel and look at other countries that are doing this really well. Sweden and Italy for example have very strict rules around keeping dogs and making sure that what laws they have are enforced.”