Madam, - How ironic that a Government department entrusted with safeguarding the welfare of the Irish hare has given the go-ahead to yet another season of coursing.
The licence issued by the Department of the Environment allows the forceful removal from the Irish countryside of thousands of hares.
"It is impossible to completely avoid stress in hares once you manhandle them and take them out of their natural environment," a vet attached to the Irish Coursing Club is on record as admitting. "Stress can come in many shapes and forms and as long as you have the hare in captivity, he is prone to it - resulting in his disability and even death at times. I believe a lot of damage can be done to hares by rough handling and netting."
The Department's own wildlife rangers have been logging the horrors of coursing for years and copies of their reports, obtained by the Irish Council Against Blood Sports, explicitly convey the cruelty.
Among the numerous examples are a hare "squealing in distress" after being caught by a muzzled dog, a mauled hare suffering with "a badly broken hind leg", pregnant hares being forced to run for their lives and a hare in agony in a coursing enclosure with its leg "almost completely broken off". Other hares have died due to the stress of being snatched from the wild or after being severely mauled by dogs.
It is this succession of abuses that underlines why a majority of people want the Government to reconsider its facilitation of coursing. - Yours, etc,
PHILIP KIERNAN, Irish Council Against Blood Sports, Mullingar, Co Westmeath.
Madam, - What should we call the Green Party these days? Should it be either "Old Green" (meaning people like Patricia McKenna who continue to support the party's commitment to a ban on blood sports), or "New Green" (meaning people such as government ministers who renege on such commitments and grant licences for coursing)? But perhaps it's time for a new colour - why is it that yellow springs so strongly to mind? - Yours etc,
MARIE-SUZANNE ALTZINGER, Sweetmount Drive, Dublin 14.