The Hunting with Dogs Bill is the most serious legislative threat rural Northern Ireland has faced in a generation and right now, the AERA Committee is asking to hear from you.

This isn't a symbolic consultation. It's the formal evidence-gathering stage that shapes the Committee's report to the Assembly. If rural voices are quiet, the Committee hears only one side of the story. If farmers, gamekeepers, shooters, hunt members, dog owners, land managers and rural businesses respond, the evidential picture changes and so does the pressure on MLAs to think again.

We need you to take fifteen minutes and submit a response using the links below

Respond to the Call for Evidence

Explore the CAI Guide to completing your response

This Bill reaches much further than "hunting"

Read the title and you'd assume this only affects a small number of hunt followers. It doesn't.

John Larkin KC, the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland, has concluded in a legal opinion reported in the Belfast Newsletter that the Bill as drafted:

• could expose an ordinary dog walker to criminal liability if their dog unexpectedly chases a rabbit or squirrel,
• could criminalise lawful shooting for food wherever a dog plays any part in the process, even where the dog never touches the animal, and
• relies on explanatory notes that, in his words, cannot properly be relied upon as an accurate account of what the Bill actually does.

If one of Northern Ireland's most senior legal minds is raising concerns this serious, the Committee needs to hear that rural people are worried too — in their own words.

The evidence doesn't support a ban

This Bill is presented as an animal welfare measure. But the independent evidence says otherwise:

The Burns Inquiry found no scientific evidence that hunting with dogs causes greater suffering than the main alternatives, shooting, lamping, trapping, each of which carries its own pros and cons.

The Bonomy Review in Scotland reached consistent conclusions and explicitly rejected a two-dog working limit, finding it seriously undermines effective pest control.

A serving gamekeeper gave direct evidence to the AERA Committee itself, during its visit to the Glenwherry Hills Regeneration Project, that removing terrier work would set back one of Northern Ireland's most successful curlew recovery projects and that Scotland's two-dog model "doesn't work" in practice.

This evidence already exists. It's on the record. But it only carries weight in the Committee's final report if enough people point to it.

Your livelihood, your community, your countryside

This isn't only about hunting. It's about:

• Farmers and land managers who rely on effective, lawful predator and pest control.

• Gamekeepers and conservationists delivering species recovery projects across Northern Ireland.

• Anyone who shoots and uses a dog.

• Farriers, vets, feed merchants, livery yards, saddlers and rural tourism businesses whose livelihoods are bound up with the wider countryside economy.

• Ordinary dog owners who could unknowingly fall foul of vague, undefined legal terms like "participation" and "under control."

If you've never engaged with a piece of legislation before, this is the one to start with.

It's easier than you think

We know Assembly consultations can feel intimidating: legal language, formal templates, unfamiliar processes. That's exactly why we've prepared a Quick-Reference Response Guide, setting out every question in the call for evidence alongside condensed bullet points you can adapt, personalise, or simply support in your own words.

You don't need to answer all 35 questions. You don't need to be a lawyer. A short, honest response describing how this Bill would affect you, your family, or your business carries real weight, especially when it comes from someone the Committee wouldn't otherwise hear from.

What to do next:

1. Follow the link to the guide. Use it to see, question by question, what's being asked and why it matters. You can find the call for evidence here.

2. Personalise it. A line about your own farm, your own dogs, your own trade adds far more weight than a generic answer.

3. Submit before the deadline. Check the AERA Committee's website for the exact closing date and preferred submission method.

4. Share this with someone else. A neighbouring farmer, a fellow gamekeeper, a friend at the yard, the more responses submitted, the harder this evidence is to ignore.

Scrutiny Committees exist to test legislation, not simply wave it through. Give them the evidence to do their job properly.

Your voice, in your own words, is the single most powerful tool rural Northern Ireland has right now. Please use it.