"Completely sickening stuff": The greyhound industry's horrific cruelty and killing has been condemned by the Irish Catholic, the country's biggest religious newspaper.
In the current edition, John McGuirk writes:
RTÉ has produced, over the summer, two investigative documentaries that, it is fair to say, have appalled and disgusted those who watched them. The first, some weeks ago, was an investigation into practices in the greyhound racing industry, exposing a situation where up to 2,000 dogs a year are disposed of in the most horrendous fashion. Many are sent off to China to be cooked alive in that country’s barbaric dog-meat festival. Others, the lucky ones, are put down by vets.
And some are dragged to an unlicensed knackers yard by their owners, who in one case were shown waiting to have the dog’s collar handed back as the poor, trusting animal writhed, in agony, on the ground, bleeding to death from an incompetent attempt at a gunshot. For dog lovers like me, it was completely sickening stuff.
Then, this week, we saw that our national predilection for cruelty is not confined to the dogs. A second RTÉ Investigation programme, this time into Childcare, discovered scenes inside a creche that would not have been out of place in those regular RTÉ dramatisations of the mother and baby homes of our past. Children shouted at, shaken, held down by force, their cries met with mockery and scorn, their supposed carers displaying horrifying cruelty and ignorance while taking extortionate sums from the unsuspecting parents.
This is not, we are told, a cruel country anymore. Our politicians fall over themselves to claim for Ireland the mantle of the earth’s most kind and compassionate and understanding country, a land of milk and honey, where the people and those who lead them are the most understanding, accepting, and sympathetic beings ever to have graced the cosmos.
Our laws have changed, we are told, to reflect this. The old powers are gone, the cruel Princes of the Church deposed; the wicked nuns banished from our land to hide behind increasingly rare convent walls; a new enlightenment has replaced the religion and dogma of old with a church of kindness and decency and cupcakes and avocado sandwiches in the park.
It is all nonsense.
Read the full article on the Irish Catholic website
https://www.irishcatholic.com/the-great-national-lie-us-and-them/
ACTION ALERT
Watch "RTE Investigates: Greyhounds Running for Their Lives" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYTb2qBjlMM and urge Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe to end government grants to cruel greyhound racing
An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar
Government Buildings,
Upper Merrion St, Dublin 2
Telephone: +353 (0)1-6194020
Email: taoiseach@taoiseach.gov.ie; leo.varadkar@oireachtas.ie; finegael@finegael.ie
Tweet to: @LeoVaradkar
Leave a comment on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/LeoVaradkar
Paschal Donohoe TD
Minister for Finance
Email: paschal.donohoe@oireachtas.ie; minister@per.gov.ie
Phone: +353 (0)1 6045810
Leave a comment on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/PaschalDonohoe/
Tweet to @Paschald
Contact the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, and urge her not to issue a licence for another season of cruel hare coursing.
Email "Stop the cruelty. Please don't grant a 2019-20 coursing licence" to josepha.madigan@oireachtas.ie
Phone: +353 (0)1 631 3800
Leave a comment on Facebook: https://facebook.com/JosephaMadiganFG
Tweet to: @josephamadigan
Sign the petition
IRELAND BAN CRUEL HARE COURSING
www.change.org/p/ireland-ban-cruel-hare-coursing
Organise a protest outside your local greyhound track and support upcoming protests. Find out more at
https://www.facebook.com/banbloodsports/photos/a.463548137094083/2282453458536866/