HORSES HAVE become so devalued in Dublin they have been swapped for a mobile phone or purchased for as little as €15, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday.
The Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was also told welfare problems in the capital included animals being starved, ridden to exhaustion, beaten, slashed, rammed by cars and set alight.
Dublin City Council deputy city manager Philip Maguire said there were only 30 licensed horses in Dublin, mainly carriage horses, but there were hundreds of unidentified horses in the city.
He said the challenges facing the council included a culture of horse “ownership” in urban areas among people who could not provide necessary facilities, as well as a disregard for the law and failure to accept responsibility which goes with ownership.
“Owners being unidentifiable make it impossible to take prosecutions and there are links with criminal activity in a minority of cases,” he said.
“Seizing and impounding horses is a dangerous working environment for staff and agents and there is vandalism, intimidation and violence. Some people are too intimidated to report incidents.”
Giving evidence to the committee, officials from Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny and Louth agreed the challenges came from the culture of horse ownership in local authority and Traveller housing areas.
Mr Maguire said the number of unidentified horses in the city could run into four figures and seizures were now carried out at night to protect the staff involved and the public.
The number of animals seized in Dublin had risen from 128 in 2006 to 349 last year and was already up to 310 so far this year.
In Limerick city 103 horses were seized last year and 93 to date this year, said Caroline Curley, the local authority’s director of environment services. The cost involved last year was €159,877.
Liam Duffy, director of services, Cork County Council, said horses which it had seized and rehomed were being stolen later from their new owners, allegedly by the original owners.
Kilkenny County Council director of community services John McCormack said when horses were impounded, private security firms were hired to be present at council offices to protect staff when the owners called to recover or claim their animals.
Members of the committee said the problem would increase this winter, especially if the weather was poor.
Labour TD Seán Sherlock said he would be opposed to any proposal to pay a slaughter premium to owners who wanted to get rid of their horses humanely as it would create a false market.
Fianna Fáil TD and committee chairman Johnny Brady, was supported by the members when he said the idea of making ferry companies and port staff responsible for ensuring no animal could travel between here and Britain without proper identification, should be implemented.
The committee had been told horses were being imported and exported without passport identification through the Northern Ireland ports.