Pro-hunting groups to continue protest against ban

PRO-HUNTING campaigners have pledged to continue lobbying TDs and Senators to block the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2010, which will make hunting deer with a pack of hounds an offence.

The State’s only licensed stag hunt, the Co Meath-based Ward Union, said it would be “vigorously resisting this legislative proposal at every step”.

The group rejected allegations of animal cruelty and claimed stag hunting is “closely monitored by Government inspectors” whose reports “have not identified animal welfare issues”.

The Ward Union also criticised the claim by Minister for the Environment John Gormley that the ban was necessary to ensure public safety in “an increasingly urbanised environment”. It said banning the hunt was “an excessive and unfair response”.

The campaign group Rise! (Rural Ireland Says Enough!), which organised a pro-hunting demonstration outside the Green Party conference in Waterford last Saturday, claimed to have gathered 45,000 signatures for a petition opposing the ban.

A spokesman said: “Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators should not allow themselves to be sleepwalked into supporting a Bill that is a first step towards destroying our rural pastimes”. The Bill was included in the renewed programme for government at the insistence of the Green Party.

Fine Gael has said it will vote against the Bill and, if passed, will repeal it if the party forms a future government. The Labour Party has yet to decide how it will vote on the measure.

Animal rights campaigners yesterday welcomed the Government’s decision. The Irish Council Against Blood Sports was “absolutely delighted” and hoped the legislation would “make swift progress” through the Oireachtas.

Spokeswoman Aideen Yourell said the Ward Union Hunt could “now switch to drag hunting and that will address all the issues of public safety and animal cruelty”.

Drag hunting involves using an artificial scent, instead of a deer, to lure the hounds.

Bernie Wright, a member of the Green Party’s Animal Welfare Policy Group and press officer of the Association of Hunt Saboteurs, welcomed the Bill as representing “another step along the road to ending what a majority of Irish citizens consider archaic and a remnant of the past”.

She added: “Similar to sexism, racism and all of life’s injustices we consider speciesism as a crime of the highest order” and said that “animals are not here for us to terrorise and chase for sport”.