Animal cruelty and welfare concerns at 'unprecedented levels', charity warns
Have Animals Crisis Work For Unable As Cost File To Returned Ispca Has People Pandemic, To Abandoned Picture: Have Left Or After Care People The Living And Some Of Bee Been Neglected Their Some Animals The
Animal cruelty and welfare concerns have reached “unprecedented levels”, with a 75% increase in case files submitted for potential criminal prosecution, the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has warned.
The charity has seen a 49.3% increase in dogs surrendered due to animal welfare concerns between January and the end of November last year compared to the same period the previous year.
Seizures and surrenders of cats increased by 44.25% in the same period.
Overall, the ISPCA saw a 36.3% increase in the animals it took into its care up to December 1, compared to the same period in 2022, with chief animal welfare inspector Conor Dowling forecasting it would surpass 1,500 animal seizures before the end of the year. Two-thirds of those would be dogs, he said.
But with only nine inspectors countrywide, and animal rescues already full, those inspectors have to be very selective and can only take the “worst cases”, Mr Dowling said.
The charity has seen more than a 75% increase in submitted case files which may lead to animal cruelty and welfare charges.
“Offences under the Animal Health and Welfare Act could include failures to care for an animal properly or failing to do anything that causes unnecessary suffering and not providing appropriate food or water or shelter,” Mr Dowling said.
Penalties under this act include fines of up to €250,000 and up to five years in prison.
“Our legislation is very good but we have limited time to devote to compiling files and to appearing in court,” he said.
“So it's the most serious cases that are being put forward for prosecution. They tend to be quite bad.”
One recent case involved more than 115 dogs stacked up on top of each other in wire cages in a home, with the dogs forced to breathe highly corrosive ammonia gas from stale urine which is damaging to their eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract and can cause blindness, lung damage and even death.
“A perfect storm of factors" has fuelled this crisis in animal welfare, Mr Dowling said.
Too many dogs were bred when there was a spike in demand — and price — over the pandemic and now Ireland has too many dogs. The cost-of-living crisis has left some people unable to care for their animals. And as people have returned to work after the pandemic, some animals have been abandoned or become neglected.
And because so many people got animals over the pandemic, there are not enough homes willing to foster rescues anymore, so animal shelters are stuck with increasing numbers of animals that are not being fostered out while more are pouring in all the time.
“Our rehoming has become challenging. And we can only move more dogs in if we move some out,” Mr Dowling said.
Some 326 cats have been seized to date, which are mostly feral or semi-feral sick kittens, Mr Dowling said.
He encouraged people to neuter their cats, because even if your cat produces kittens that are homed, it leaves fewer homes available for the hundreds of suffering kittens out there that are in desperate need of homing.
“There are kittens all over the country suffering due to ill health but there's nobody looking after them,” he said.