No Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Bill has been conducted, as recommended in Government guidelines.
Select Committee on Environment, Heritage and Local GovernmentTuesday, 25th May 2010
Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2010
Submission from the Wild Deer Association of IrelandRead by Mr Damien Hannigan, Secretary, Wild Deer Association of Ireland
Chairman, Deputies, Senators.
On behalf of our members in the Wild Deer Association of Ireland (WDAI) I want to thank you for invitation to us to brief you today on the issues and concerns we have in relation to the recently published Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2010.
At the outset, I want to acknowledge the courtesy and assistance we have received from the Committee Secretariat, notably Mr Pat Neary, in preparing for this session.
Let me introduce the members of our delegation. I am Damien Hannigan, Secretary of the WDAI, and with me are Pat Scully our Chairman, Liam Nolan, Secretary of the Deer Alliance, which is the body charged with assessment and certification of licensed hunters hunting on Coillte forest property, Thomas Murphy, Vice Chairman of the Irish Deer Society, an organisation which represents deer stalkers. Our Association represents more than 1,500 deer stalkers throughout the country. Our interest goes beyond one of sport and extends into the training and certification of hunters in the skills of deer stalking, as well into the area of the conservation of our deer population.
As you and the Members will be aware, Chairman, there has been considerable public and political controversy about the Wildlife Bill. That is because this is the Bill designed to give effect to the commitment in the renegotiated Programme for Government ‘to ban stag hunting’. Several statements and comments have been made by the Minister, Deputy Gormley, as well as by other members of the Green Party, that suggested that the phrase ‘to ban stag hunting’ referred only to their proposal to ban the Ward Union Staghounds in county Meath. However, the controversy over the banning of the Ward Union Hunt must not be allowed the obscure the fact that the Bill goes much further than that single objective.
For the first time ever in law, Section 3, Subsection (2) of the Bill creates a new offence that will curb, inhibit and possibly render unworkable the officially recognised and endorsed method of deer stalking. Section 3, Subsection (2) states:
‘Subject to subsection (3), a person, including the holder of a licence or permission granted under this Act, who hunts deer with two or more dogs shall be guilty of an offence.’
In simple terms, Chairman, deer stalkers are now limited to only one dog. Let me explain the purpose of dogs in deer stalking. Unlike other forms of hunting, it is not to seek and find a live quarry. Quite the opposite. The dogs are used to locate a fallen deer extremely quickly so that the animal may be despatched humanely. When a deer is wounded, it immediately retreats and hides in deep cover. Without the assistance of dogs, it could take stalkers several days to locate a wounded deer or the deer might never be found. Thus, the purpose of using dogs is an entirely humane one.
The proposed limit to only one dog is a fundamental change to the way deer stalking has always been conducted. When a small group of hunters go out together for the sport of pitting themselves against Nature and their quarry, several of them may bring a dog with them. Often, this is a way of training and developing a young dog into the required level of proficiency in locating deer.
Apart from the requirements of having a gun licence and a licence to hunt deer, the normal practice for deer stalkers is to lease an area of forestry land from Coillte for the purposes of stalking the deer on it. This is has the obvious benefit of reducing the damage caused to saplings and young trees by foraging deer. It is a requirement, indeed, of the Coillte lease that the stalker must have access to a dog or dog trained for the purpose of tracking deer, including injured deer.
Thousands of hectares of State forestry are leased for deer stalking for five-year terms. The annual leasing cost to a licensed hunter will range from several hundred euros, to many thousands of euro, depending on acreage and cull numbers involved. The annual leasing cost for a forest in North Wicklow for example, with high deer density and close to the centre of human population, could run to twenty to thirty thousand euros per year. This revenue, payable annually and with commitment to a five-year licence duration, is hugely important to Coillte.
Many of these leases will be coming up for renewal in June. With the publication of the Wildlife Bill, deer stalkers are now faced with a dilemma as to whether or not they should renew these expensive leases. If Section 3 is enacted as it stands a few months into the new leases, they could be stuck with costly leases with a severely restricted hunting capability. This is creating huge uncertainty and could lead to reduction in the number of new leases taken up. The result of that will be that the deer population will begin to get out of control and will cause serious damage to forestry plantations and to adjoining farms.
We have met with senior management of Coillte to discuss this. I think it is fair to state that they expressed deep concern about the implications of the creation of this new offence and they will be writing to the Minister, Deputy Gormley, to express their concern.
We also met recently with senior officials of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Again, it is a fair representation of that meeting to state that they, too, are concerned about the implications and it is their view that Section 3, subsection (2) will have to be referred again to the Minister, the Attorney-General and the Parliamentary Draughtsman’s Office to see if a wording may be devised that will remedy the defect.
I refer to a news report to that effect in the ‘Irish Times’ of Thursday, May 20th and I quote in full:
‘Earlier it emerged that Minister for the Environment John Gormley is prepared to alter forthcoming wildlife legislation to allay the concerns of deerstalkers who claim that further restrictions are about to be imposed.
A meeting took place this week between senior officials in the Department of the Environment and representatives of deerstalking associations who are concerned about the implications of the recently-published Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2010.
Mr Gormley’s spokesman said the officials gave assurances at the meeting that there was “no intention to restrict traditional deerstalking”, and that the proposed legislation “could and would be amended to ensure clarity on this issue”.
It is important to state the following for the record, Chairman:
- There is absolutely no public demand for the imposition of the ‘one dog’ requirement
- There is absolutely no controversy about the way deer stalking is conducted. Quite the contrary, more than 30,000 deer are culled every year under licence from the Minister, and some Green Party representatives claim that the Minister has issued more licences to stalk deer than any of his predecessors.
- No reason has been stated for the proposed change
- There has been absolutely no prior consultation with licensed deer stalkers, who now number over 4000 nationally, in relation to this Bill. The first we knew of this was after the Bill was published.
- No Regulatory Impact Assessment of the Bill has been conducted, as recommended in Government guidelines.
In short, Chairman, the whole situation is a total mess.
How could this happen? What way is this to treat law-abiding citizens? In the absence of any statement by the Minister as to his reasons for proposing Section 3 we have to give him the benefit of the doubt in relation to his bona fides. However, it is now beginning to look as if, in his headlong rush to ban the Ward Union Staghounds, he is trampling over deer stalking as well.
We appeal to this Committee for your advice and support in preventing a great wrong from being perpetrated. We suggest it would be helpful if you heard directly the views of Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Perhaps the Minister and his officials could come into the Committee to explain their rationale for Section 3. At the very minimum, the Minister needs to agree to initiate consultations with all the stakeholders affected by the Bill as well as to conduct a full Regulatory Impact Assessment.
We are prepared to enter wholeheartedly into any process of dialogue recommended by this Committee. However, I have to say that we foresee no solution other than the total deletion of Section 3, Subsection (2). We are open to persuasion, but we do not believe that a suitable formula of words can be found otherwise. There is absolutely no demand anywhere for – nor support by anyone – for the introduction of a ‘one dog’ rule into deerstalking. The simplest and safest way to remedy this defect is to delete the subsection.
This would safeguard the current humane method of deer stalking, which has worked well not only for us, but for Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service as well.
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