Wednesday, June 28, 2010 marked a sad day for hunting in Ireland when a coalition government lead by the majority 
party Fianna Fail, the minority Green Party, and some Independent members of Parliament voted to end a 180-year-old tradition by banning the only pack of staghounds on the island, the Ward Union Staghounds. It is all the more remarkable, considering the extremely serious economic problems that Ireland has at the moment, that the Green Party chose to make staghunting a central issue in their renegotiated program for government.
A vigorous countrywide campaign was fought under the banner of a new organisation, RISE (Rural Ireland Says Enough), which consisted of all field sports, the horse industry, and the Irish Farmers Association.
The Ward Union Staghounds have been in existence since 1830, and hunt on the east coast of Ireland in the counties of Dublin and Meath. They maintain a herd of 150 wild Irish red deer, and transport a stag in a special trailer to their twice weekly meets. It is a type of hunting known as carted stag, which means that the stag is captured at the end of the hunt when the hounds hold it at bay, and it is returned to the deer park at the kennels to relax for the rest of the season. A stag is hunted only once each season.
Because of the challenging country that is crossed in the course of a day’s hunting—wide, deep ditches and hedges—the hunt has produced a succession of well known National Hunt jockeys such as Paul Carberry, Robbie Power, and Barry and Ross Geraghty, and international showjumpers such as Tommy Brennan and six-times winner of the Royal Dublin Society Hunter Championship Francis Cash. The area is also a centre for National Hunt trainers like Noel Meade and Gordon Elliot, and many of their horses acquire that fifth survival leg in the hunting field. The Aintree Grand National winner Silver Birch is a familiar sight in the Ward Union field having a change of scenery from the race course.
Green Party Minister of the Department of The Environment John Gormely refused to meet representatives from the Ward Union in the lead-up to the legislation. It is also a wake up call for field sports followers—when the Green Party professes to legislate for animal welfare—that they did not see fit to make any provision for the Ward Union’s unique herd of 150 wild Irish Red Deer or the hunt knackery, which collects and processes more than 5,000 dead farm animals each year and keeps the countryside free from pollution and the danger of rotting animal carcasses. Nor was any consideration given to the redeployment of four full-time staff or twenty-five couple of staghounds.
Although shattered by the new legislation, the Ward Union Staghounds plan to pursue the new legislation through the Courts. But it could be a long and expensive action to take without any guarantee of success. Meanwhile, field sports followers are holding their breaths while another piece of Green Party legislation on the Dog Breeding Bill is being discussed in Parliament. If hunts and greyhound breeders are not excluded, it will mean that all dog breeding establishments with more than five breeding bitches will have to be licensed and open to inspection by government department officials.
Noel Mullins is a photojournalist and author in Ireland. In a previous life, he was a chief marketing executive with IBM in that country. To read more and to preview his books, click here.