No votes, no mercy

SIR, With TDs and Senators due to commence their summer break a fortnight from now it’s depressing to note that another year has passed with no action from the Oireachtas to end the savagery of live hare coursing.

This time last year TDs voted by 114 to 20 to allow the continued setting of greyhounds on hares for fun.

Perhaps the issue didn’t matter to them. Hares can’t vote, so a TD may conclude it’s not worth his or her time bothering about its sad plight. It may get mauled by the dogs, or have its bones crushed, or be sent hurtling into the air like a sloither whacked by an ace hurler, but since the timid creature can’t mark a number one or second preference on that ballot paper he might as well not exist.

Foxes aren’t on the electoral register either, but the lads and lassies who chase them to death have deep pockets and friends in high places. So the doors of TDs’ clinics are slammed shut on them too.

The same goes for the yellowhammers and other assorted birds and animals that find themselves trapped in the depths of hedges that are burned or cut in the nesting season. They can’t vote either, however sweet their singing voices or attractive their plumage or furred frontage might be to cross county walkers or nature lovers.

Hopefully the next election will result in an intake of principled new Deputies who will be prepared to what is right for wildlife’s persecuted wildlife, as distinct from what is politically expedient.

Some day our hares and foxes will run free and hedgerow fauna will find peace, but that can only happen after Ireland has turned over a political new leaf.

Sincerely, John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co Tipperary.