As the Northern Ireland Assembly continues its scrutiny of the Hunting with Dogs Bill, two reports from the Assembly's Research and Information Service (RaISe) deserve close attention. Rather than simply repeating comment or arguments made by us or other campaign groups, the reports examine the proposed legislation, its potential consequences and the costs and practicalities of enforcement.
For Countryside Alliance Ireland, the findings reinforce our concerns about the Bill and demonstrate why further scrutiny is essential before new criminal offences are introduced.
The RaISe Review of Costs highlights one particularly significant issue: at the time of its publication, no Northern Ireland department or relevant public body had produced a detailed estimate of the cost of implementing and enforcing the Bill. DAERA had not undertaken a specific assessment, while the precise responsibilities of DAERA Wildlife Inspectors and the PSNI would first need to be established.
The Bill would create new offences and involve enforcement, investigations and potentially prosecutions. RaISe therefore identifies possible costs for DAERA, the PSNI, the courts and the Prison Service. Those costs would ultimately have to be met from already pressured public finances.
The report also considers experience elsewhere. In Scotland, RaISe identified estimated additional annual costs associated with comparable legislation, ranging from tens of thousands of pounds to considerably more depending on whether licensing costs were included. While the researchers rightly caution that Northern Ireland cannot simply be compared directly with Scotland, the figures demonstrate that introducing new wildlife legislation can have significant resource implications.
The wider RaISe research also draws attention to the breadth of the Bill. It would prohibit hunting wild mammals with dogs while introducing separate provisions covering trail hunting and terrier work. At the same time, exemptions are proposed for activities including managing wild mammals above ground, relieving the suffering of injured animals, searching for dead wild mammals and certain forms of dog training.
For those who live and work in the countryside, the detail of these exemptions is crucial. A law may provide exemptions in principle, but if the conditions attached to them are complicated or unclear, legitimate wildlife management and pest control could become unnecessarily difficult.
RaISe also highlights differences between the proposed Northern Ireland legislation and approaches elsewhere in the UK, particularly regarding terrier work. Scotland has established a regulated framework allowing certain forms of underground work in defined circumstances, subject to strict safeguards. The Northern Ireland Bill instead proposes a much more restrictive approach.
The reports also examine the proposed prohibition on trail hunting, including questions around how the activity is defined and how the offence would operate in practice. These are important considerations when legislation is intended to create criminal offences.
The strength of the RaISe reports is that they do not tell MLAs how they should vote. Instead, they identify evidence, costs, comparisons and potential consequences for Members to consider. That is precisely why they should not be overlooked.
For Countryside Alliance Ireland, the picture emerging from the RaISe reports is of legislation with fundamental problems that cannot simply be resolved by minor amendments. There are questions over definitions, exemptions, terrier work, trail hunting, licensing, enforcement, costs and the evidence underpinning some of the arguments for the Bill. With penalties of up to five years' imprisonment and unlimited fines, the requirement for clear and workable legislation could hardly be more important.
As John Larkin KC said when discussing the Bill before the Committee: “The surgery, it seems to me, is going to be so radical that the patient is going to die.” For CAI, that neatly captures the problem. This is not a Bill that simply needs a few technical adjustments; the evidence suggests its foundations are deeply flawed. The Assembly should take the RaISe findings seriously, recognise the scale of the problems and withdraw the Bill rather than attempting to patch up legislation that is fundamentally unfit for purpose.
You can read both reports here: