Passport to a new reality

Sir, – I see that the Department of Foreign Affairs has launched a public consultation with a view to getting ideas on how to highlight our diverse natural environment via a new passport design. This will replace the harp that has graced our travel documents since Independence.

A lovely idea, I thought, until I saw the list of suggested animals included in the department’s consultation survey.

These include the Irish hare, the red fox and the badger – three mammals that suffer abhorrent and unrelenting ill treatment, and with the full blessing of the State.

The gentle hare can be legally trapped and forced to run from dogs at public venues.

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The fox can be chased until its lungs give out and exhaustion delivers it to the pack.

And the badger continues to be scapegoated for the failure of the State’s bovine TB eradication scheme.

If we depict the reality for these iconic creatures, as distinct from a misty-eyed notion of their status, we’d have to show a hare being mauled or tossed skyward on a coursing field, a fox having the skin ripped off its bones, or a badger struggling to free itself from a snare.

Before we celebrate our wonderful fauna in such a high-profile, State-sanctioned format, we should lobby our TDs to enact a law to end the persecution of these animals.

They have a right to live, and they add greatly to our human experience, as we found during the Covid lockdown when we slowed down the rush of civilisation and reconnected with nature.

Only then will our long-suffering wildlife win its own passport… to a blood sport-free zone. – Yours, etc,

JOHN FITZGERALD,

Callan,

Co Kilkenny.