I thank the Minister for coming in. I welcome that the Department of agriculture has published a draft general scheme of a Bill to amend the Dog Breeding Establishments Act 2010. Ireland is the puppy farm capital of Europe and this is obviously nothing to be proud of. Nearly six years since policy change in this area was first considered by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, this is the first meaningful legislative contribution that has been made.

The Bill is intended to introduce long-awaited measures regarding breeding practices, sales regulations and enforcement powers. That is very welcome. The most significant oversight though is the complete absence of a cap on the number of breeding females permitted within a dog breeding establishment. Without such a cap Ireland risks continuing its long-standing international reputation for industrial-scale puppy farms. Once again, we appear to be legislating in a way that accommodates and legitimises industrial-scale breeding operations rather than phasing them out and clamping down on them. There is no place in a modern animal welfare framework for puppy farms and any meaningful amendment of the Dog Breeding Establishments Act should begin the work of dismantling this model rather than entrenching it. We currently have multiple licensed dog breeding establishments authorised to keep hundreds of breeding females. These figures do not even include the pups or stud dogs. These breeding females do not have lives worth living. There is also very little transparency regarding the lives and treatment of stud dogs.

We are increasingly aware of the serious welfare and behavioural issues experienced by pups bred in these environments. Welfare cannot meaningfully be regulated at these scales, regardless of how robust the legislative language is on paper. Without a significantly low cap on breeding females, these reforms risking being entirely ineffective. I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify this issue and state whether the Government intends to put in a meaningful cap on the number of breeding females and therefore the scale of breeding establishments. I would also be very grateful if the Minister would clarify whether the public consultation responses or the dog control stakeholder group suggested including a cap and if so, why these recommendations were ignored.

I mentioned we are the puppy farm capital of Europe. Most puppies are sold through a website called dogs.ie. DoneDeal and Gumtree stopped selling them, as did most online sales platforms. Some 25,770 dogs and puppies were advertised on dogs.ie last year and every puppy farmer in Ireland trades on that site. The site facilitates puppy farms and it may be legal but I believe it should not be because it facilitates the puppy farms. If you use dogs.ie to buy a dog you can be 99.9% you are buying a puppy farm dog. It is something we need to address within legislation because clearly the facilitation by dogs.ie of puppy farms is not acceptable and we have to do something about it. We must ensure there is a cap and that any legislation that is put in place is effective, enforced and ensures animal welfare and dog welfare is prioritised.

I thank Senator Andrews for raising this point. It is something I am deeply passionate about. Reform of the legislation governing dog welfare is a key priority for me and for the Government.

In order to bring a coherent approach to dog control, policy and legislative responsibility under both the Control of Dogs Act 1986 and the Dog Breeding Establishments Act 2010 transferred to my Department last year as part of our programme for Government commitments. In both cases, local authorities retain responsibility for operational and enforcement matters.

I am pleased to confirm the dog breeding establishments (amendment) Bill 2026 is being actively progressed. The Bill has 17 heads and addresses three broad areas, namely, welfare and breeding standards, sales and record keeping and administration and enforcement. I brought the heads of Bill to Cabinet and received approval to go ahead and draft the full legislation. On welfare and breeding standards, the Bill will place enhanced duties on operators covering the socialisation and habituation of dogs.

It will introduce a four-litter lifetime limit and a one-litter-per-year cap, set minimum and maximum breeding age limits, prohibit the mating of bitches that have had two prior Caesarean sections and introduce a ban on in-breeding, which people might presume already exists in legislation but does not. We will also outlaw that awful practice. In response to the Senator’s earlier point, this is about ensuring the legislation is robust. I also have to work to make sure any current or future legislation is properly enforced. A mandatory minimum staffing ratio of one full-time equivalent staff member per 20 breeding females will also be placed on a statutory footing, with a two-year transition period to allow operators to adjust in a timely and responsible manner.

The Bill will ban third-party sales from dog breeding establishments. This goes to the point the Senator made about people buying dogs online. I have heard anecdotal stories of people with their much-loved family pet and when you ask them how they acquired it and where they got it, they will say they met somebody in a public car park somewhere and they paid for that puppy. However, they had no sense of where that puppy had been bred, what the conditions were like, what the mother of that dog was, whether she was put straight back into pup and the likes. Under the new legislation, it will be unlawful for operators to sell dogs under eight weeks of age or to sell them from any premises other than where they were born and reared. Prior to any sale, prospective buyers must be shown the pup’s biological mother on site.

This is a really practical and a seismic change because there are a lot of people out there who passionately believe in this legislation, love their family dog but do not know where their puppy came from and probably do not want to know. If we make the process that they have to go and see where it is, that will make a very significant change in people who have happily turned a blind eye just to get that much-loved family pet. We need to reflect on that and we need to reflect on the role charities and others can play. There is a significant role here that many other well-structured organisations can offer dogs and much-loved family pets for future operation as well. Those who carry out dog breeding properly and well will have nothing to fear from this legislation because it puts them on a firm footing, puts a proper structure in place and takes away the veil that has hung over the whole process to date.

On administration and enforcement, authorised officers will be granted new powers to seize and detain dogs where it is reasonably suspected that an offence has been committed. Penalties for the most serious offences will be significantly increased, with fines of up €250,000 and-or five years imprisonment, bringing sanctions under the 2010 Act in line with those available under the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013.

I have not included a hard legislative cap on the total number of breeding females at a dog breeding establishment in the present draft heads of Bill, which is what we are currently dealing with. Legal advice indicates that there are difficulties with such an approach. There are also practical issues that would have to be explored further. An establishment can in principle increase in size and staffing to accommodate more animals without necessarily affecting welfare outcomes. My Department will engage with the Office of the Attorney General to explore the question of a cap further during the formal drafting stage and it has not been ruled out. This is draft legislation that will go through all Stages in the Dáil and Seanad. There is a long process for this to go through.

This legislation is very important and welcome. However, without a cap it will undo everything positive. It will legitimise and entrench puppy farms. It will be really disappointing if there is not a cap on that. What legal reasons are given for not including a cap? Is there a timeframe in which legislation will be drafted and brought before the Oireachtas because it can go on for quite a while? Did the public consultation responses or the dog control stakeholder groups suggest including a cap? If they did, why was it ignored? What were the legal reasons for ignoring it if they suggested putting a cap in place? A cap is critical to this.

The Minister mentioned 20 breeding female dogs on a site. That is just not right. Animal welfare cannot be done properly with 20 breeding females on one site. It is open to criminality and corruption as it currently stands and we need to clamp down. Has the Minister considered addressing the issues with websites such as dogs.ie, which are facilitating puppy farms and facilitating the deplorable conditions dogs are being kept in day in and day out?

Obviously, I am in the hands of the Oireachtas on the timing of the legislation. There will be pre-legislative scrutiny through the agriculture committee where members will be able to have their say. The Chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food, Deputy Aindrias Moynihan, is working with me to have that fast-tracked and take place before the summer recess with legislation to be introduced early in the autumn. I am determined to deliver on this very quickly.

The Bill addresses concerns about excessive numbers through many means. The Senator referenced the cap. When talking about the 20 dogs, that is the staffing ratio that will come into place; it does not exist at the minute. There is no staffing ratio for the number of staff per breeding animals. The mandatory staffing ratio will be 1:20. That creates an indirect but real constraint on establishment size. The Senator is talking about capping and, as I said, there is a whole legislative process to go through here. What is the size of the premises? Are we talking about a garage or a warehouse? What is the appropriate number of dogs in each of them? The cap is quite a crude instrument in itself. There are many constraints in this proposed legislation that do not exist at the minute.

What was the legal element?

The strengthened improvement notice regime will explicitly empower authorised officers to require a reduction in the number of dogs on premises where welfare concerns arise. Local authorities also retain the ability to set conditions on the number of breeding females as part of the registration process and this avenue remains open to them, particularly in respect of new applications. It is about putting best practice into place.

While non-statutory guidelines for dog breeding establishments were published in 2018, these set out advisory best practices but were not legally binding. That has been the big challenge here. Several of the amendments proposed by the Bill will now give legislative force to recommendations contained in those guidelines, which is a significant step forward. I look forward to bringing in this legislation soon and I have no doubt we will have many opportunities throughout all Stages of that legislation to discuss it here in the Seanad, in the Dáil and in the committee.