‘THERE’S IN PUPP THAN IN

Cruel trade of dog breeding on our shores exposed in documentary

IRELAND’S shocking multimillion-euro puppy trade was exposed in a BBC investigation broadcast last night, showing how thousands of sick and dying pups smuggled into Scotland began life in dark sheds on our shores.

The Spotlight investigation revealed 25,000 to 30,000 pups from the Republic are smuggled from puppy farms and backstreet breeders here into Scotland and mainland UK each year through Belfast Port.

Harrowing footage showed pups crammed into boxes without food or water and gasping for air, some cowering in fear.

Many were seriously ill before they began the journey because of the squalid conditions in which they were bred, while others died after being bought by unwitting families. The programme tracked

‘Most of them are never caught’

down some of the main figures involved in illegally exporting pups from Ireland and spoke to the Scottish authorities, who said 90% of all problems in the puppy trade in Scotland come though Belfast. And most of these dogs come from the Republic. ‘To me it’s the new drugs,’ said Mike Flynn, the head of the Scottish SPCA.

Brian Gillen, head of the Dublin SPCA, told the Spotlight team of the scale and magnitude of the illegal trade in the Republic.

Mr Gillen laid bare the realities of how pups are being smuggled with impunity across the Irish Sea, saying there is more money in smuggling pups than drugs and there are no penalties if discovered.

He said that despite tens of thousands of pups being smuggled in the boots of vans, or concealed as cargo or in one case in a handbag, astonishingly, the Irish Government has yet to introduce any penalties, meaning anyone caught smuggling can either continue their journey without the pups or return to port with the poor pups.

Mr Gillen said many are also back-street breeders using back gardens and sheds because there is so much money to be made.

‘You take 100 pups of anything you like to pick in those photos there, and if you take £1,000 a pup, you have £100,000,’ he said.

‘So it’s more valuable than maybe drugs or whatever else to them. It’s a high value. Most are never caught but for those who are, fines are minuscule. When [named dealer] was stopped by [gardaí] around Tipperary he had 50, 60 puppies.’

EU regulations ban the export of pups aged under 15 weeks to ensure they have been fully vaccinated against disease.

What the Spotlight inquiry – and the many investigations carried out by this newspaper and our sister paper The Irish Mail on Sunday over the past five years – showed is that the illegal puppy trade is worse than ever.

Puppy gangs are now bringing UK microchips and passports into Ireland and inserting the chips in the dogs here to disguise the origins of where they were born, usu