The new animal welfare legislation that has just come into effect has some glaring anomalies.
The increase in penalties and the establishment of a hotline for people who witness ill treatment of animals are positive developments.
But this new law prohibits attendance at dog fights on the grounds that these events involve cruelty to animals, yet specifically exempts hare coursing and fox hunting from prohibition.
In other words, it is a crime to watch two dogs fighting each other in an organised setting, but perfectly legal to observe or organize the pursuit of a wild dog by a pack of hounds.
This law that Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney lauds as a milestone for animal welfare actually protects the right of people to hound foxes to exhaustion and agonising death, and even the cruel digging out of foxes or fox cubs that go to ground during a hunt.
It also leaves untouched the obscenity of hare coursing. If the minister deems it cruel to attend dog fights, how can he stand over allowing hares to be snatched from their humble homes in the countryside to be used as live bait in contests between pairs of greyhounds? What kind of ‘animal welfare’ logic is that?
One can, under the new legislation, now pick up the phone and report some forms of animal cruelty to the special Department of Agriculture number. But we can’t make such a call when we see hares being mauled or tossed up into the air like rag dolls at a coursing event.
The legislation, sadly, is an Irish solution for Irish animals that has political cute-hoorism written all over it, safeguarding as it does two of the most vicious blood sports on the planet.
When will we see a hotline to protect the fox and the hare?
John Fitzgerald
Campaign Against Cruel Sports
Ireland’s women edge out met in graduate stakes
Nearly 58 per cent of Irish women aged 30-34 have a third level education, compared to 44 per cent of men in the same age bracket, according to figures released last week by the EU.
Other key findings from the Eurostat study, released to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March reveal that over 55 per cent of Irish women are in employment, slightly below the EU average (58.5%), while just under 35 per cent of Irish woman are in part-time jobs compared to just 13.3 percent of Irish men.
There was also a smaller proportion of early leavers from education and training among women (10.9%) than among men (14.4%) in the EU28 in 2012.
While the extent of leaving school early differs considerably between EU member states, this gender pattern was the same for all except Bulgaria.
Overall, a higher proportion of young women than men have a degree in the EU, with the largest differences in these rates observed in Estonia (50.4% for women and 28.1% for men).
The fields of study chosen within tertiary education vary greatly between women and men.
In the EU28 in 2011, 79.1 per cent of graduates in education and training and 76 per cent of graduates in health and welfare were women.
On the other hand, only 26.6 per cent of graduates in engineering and 40.8 per cent in science and mathematics were female.
In addition, the highest fertility rates in the EU were recorded in Ireland, France and the United Kingdom – and these numbers bear some correlation to employment figures.
Among the ten member states showing fertility rates above or at the EU28 average, eight of them (Denmark, France, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom) also had employment rates of women above the EU28 average, and two of them (Belgium and Ireland) had rates close to the average.
Ciara Eustace
European Commission Representation in Ireland
