Countryside Alliance Ireland has told the Assembly's Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee that the Hunting with Dogs Bill cannot be relied upon as drafted and would make animal welfare worse, not better. Director Gary McCartney gave oral evidence alongside John Larkin KC, who has reviewed the Bill on our behalf. Our message was simple: this Bill is not built on evidence, it cannot be relied on as drafted, as it would increase the very suffering it claims to end and we call on the Bill sponsor to withdraw his Bill.
We do not accept that this Bill is really about welfare. If it were, its proponents would have to show a ban is better for welfare than the alternatives, and nobody has done that. The Burns Inquiry found no firm scientific evidence that hunting was cruel, and Lord Bonomy's Scottish review reached the same conclusion.
Mr Blair has questioned witnesses closely on consultation figures, statistical methodology and comparisons with other jurisdictions, but at no point has he put the central question to those opposing his Bill, would it actually improve animal welfare? That is the stated purpose of this legislation, and it deserves a direct answer, not a series of questions around the edges of it.
During the session referring to the Bill Mr Larkin said:
"This bill really is the equivalent of identifying a suspect in a block of flats and sending an airplane over with a bomb to demolish the block of flats for fear that the suspect would escape. It is absolute carpet bombing of a particular subject matter."
This is a debate about wildlife management, not sport. The Bill's sponsor, John Blair MLA, says he wants to end hunting for sport, not pest control, but that distinction does not exist in his Bill's text, which bans hunting with dogs for any reason, including trail hunting, which isn't even practised here. Our memorandum of understanding with the Ulster Farmers' Union and the Northern Ireland Masters of Foxhounds Association, renewed this year, records that hunting with hounds on agricultural land is for wildlife management and pest control. We also pointed to Glenwherry in the Antrim Hills, where predator control including terrier work has seen red grouse numbers rise from 37 birds in 2009 to over 300 by 2019, work gamekeeper Merlin Becker says would be "absolutely monumental" to lose.
Most of our evidence focused on how unworkable the Bill is. John Larkin KC took the Committee through it clause by clause. Under the participation clause, a person can be caught whether or not they control the dog at all, meaning a dog walker, or even a neighbour walking beside them, could be exposed if the dog simply chased a squirrel. Trail hunting is defined so broadly it could catch any dog following a scent. A farmer sending dogs into a barn to flush rats could commit an offence, since the exemption doesn't cover terrier work. And there are no plausible safeguards anywhere, despite penalties of up to five years in prison.
One exchange captured this well. Referencing an earlier analogy by John Larkin about a tiger, Mr Blair said he had never been better placed to ask whether a tiger escaped from Belfast Zoo would count as a wild animal under his own Bill. Mr Larkin pointed out that in the text itself a wild mammal is defined to include one that has escaped or been released from captivity. An escaped tiger would fall within scope, and anyone tracking it with dogs could commit two offences. It showed how far the drafting reaches beyond anything most people would call hunting.
Members involved in game shooting should also take note of an exchange earlier in the session in connection with this Bill, where Mr Blair questioned shooting and conservation representatives on whether commercially rearing game birds could genuinely be described as habitat conservation or wildlife management at all. That line of questioning had nothing to do with the Hunting with Dogs Bill itself, but it will not have gone unnoticed. Given how widely this Bill's own definitions already reach, as the tiger example shows, we think it would be complacent for anyone in the shooting community to assume their own activities sit safely outside the sponsor's sights, whether that is by accident of drafting or by design.
Asked what amendments could put the Bill right, Mr Larkin reached for an image closer to home than Belfast Zoo. "It's a bit like in Donegal if you ask for directions, one of the first answers you'll get is, 'well, I wouldn't start from here,'" he told the Committee. The changes needed, he said, would be so radical the Bill would no longer be the same piece of legislation at all. "The surgery, it seems to me, is going to be so radical that the patient is going to die." Two lines that summed up our own view of this Bill entirely.
Countryside Alliance Ireland has called on the Bill sponsor to withdraw his Bill and is calling for a Northern Ireland-specific independent report. We also support wording based on the 1972 legislation, which would be principled and proportionate, allowing activities to continue whilst allowing prosecution where unnecessary suffering is caused.
Photo credit: Bernard Hand