A Bill to ban hare coursing was overwhelmingly defeated in the Dáil by 125 votes to 24 as all Fianna Fáil TDs voted in line with the party whip, including those who personally supported the legislation.
Sinn Féin also opposed the Bill during the vote on Wednesday night, making its rejection inevitable.
The legislation was introduced by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy and aimed to prohibit the coursing of hares with dogs by amending the Wildlife Act 1976 and the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013.
As expected, Fianna Fáil Dublin Rathdown TD Shay Brennan voted with his party. He said publicly last week he would vote against the legislation in line with the Fianna Fáil whip.
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The legislation has divided party TDs but Brennan said a “growing number of TDs” are finding it increasingly difficult to defend a pro-coursing position.
His party colleague, Carlow-Kilkenny TD Peter ‘Chap’ Cleere said on RTÉ it was one of the most regulated sports in Ireland and a popular rural tradition.
The Social Democrats, Labour and Independents Charles Ward and Paul Gogarty also supported the Bill to ban coursing.
The legislation would make it an offence to enter a dog for a hare coursing event, permit a dog to be entered for such an event, or to attend, participate or knowingly facilitate the event.
In hare coursing, a hare is released and chased by muzzled dogs, with the winning dog judged to be the one who first forced the animal to turn. Animal rights bodies say the practice terrifies the hares and is inherently cruel.
Earlier on Wednesday, Murphy had called on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to allow TDs to “vote with their conscience” on the issue to “ban the barbaric practice of hare coursing”.
He said by doing so they would “join the North and the rest of Europe in saying that terrorising animals is not entertainment or sport”.
Murphy said they would help “stop thousands of Irish hares being captured from the wild every year, crammed into crates and then into enclosures with other hares despite them being solitary animals”.
The hares would then be made to “run for their lives from dogs that are ten times their size and with hares being pinned to the ground, thrown into the air and killed every single year.”
He said he knew “many Fianna Fáil TDs have told constituents that they are opposed to hare coursing and want to vote against it”.
The Dublin South-West TD asked Micheál Martin his own position and if he was personally in favour of coursing, or thought it “okay to torture wild animals for fun or for gambling”.
He questioned the existence of a report that nobody seemed to have seen, four years after Minister of State said in 2022 that an “independent economic analysis estimated that coursing contributed approximately €70.7 million annually to the Irish economy”.
Murphy said the same figure had been repeated by Fine Gael TDs and the Irish Coursing Club, which he claimed had refused to supply it to The Journal news website when it requested the document, “supposedly because it has to be presented to their members first”.
The Taoiseach said he had not seen the report. “It is not surprising that people would have done studies and analysis on this, but it is more than just economics in any event.”
He added: “There are people in rural Ireland who would have diametrically different opinions or approaches” to Murphy.
Every party “has its own rules in respect of a vote of conscience”, he said. “In the Government parties’ situation, it is in respect of human life issues.”
The Taoiseach said “coursing is regulated significantly more tightly here as a result of previous legislation. The post-ban experience in Britain and Northern Ireland witnessed a rise in illegal hunting and poaching, and the need for dedicated police operations.
“If we over-regulate or ban it this can lead to worse practices as well. That is something that has to be factored into this.”
