That’s a fantastic photo, foxes are class. People need to shoot foxes to protect their farms but people hunt them for sport sure aren’t class.
Humans are cruel. We’ve been slaughtering each other and animals since the beginning of time and will continue to do so till the end of time unfortunately.Â
Im suprised anyone at all is in favour of not banning it
I would personally phrase this as: *Why are the government pro-fox hunting?*
Being opposed to banning something is simply supporting it.
Read the bill first. I’m against fox hunting, it’s barbaric, but the bill put forward would ban fox hunting in it’s entirety, including farmers protecting their animals. There’s a difference between hopping on a horse with a shotgun and a bloodhound, and shooting a fox because it ate your chickens. This bill ignored that.
Why are the government and Sinn Fein opposed to fox hunting. Sinn Fein should not be left off the hook on this.
They worded it too strongly. Prime student union politics and I never use that phrase.
Basically everybody wants the cruel sport of fox hunting to be banned. That doesn’t mean you have to ban ethical culling as well. It’s performative and was written to never pass in the first place. It’s to drum up outrage. They never even intended for it to pass and that’s the harsh truth.
Because rich cunts hunt foxes, and the government like to be friendly to rich cunts.
In all honesty, the Bill overstepped. I would personally prefer people leave them alone, but the bill should have specifically targeted the hunts first, and tried to make a future ammendment.
Micheal Healy Rae, like is brother, is full of shit. The amount of lies and misinformation they both have told just on this subject is astounding for a national politician and a minister. Danny claimed that 18 of his son lambs were killed by foxes in one day…. absolute nonsense. Micheal claiming that Fox hunting with dogs reduces the spread of disease. They both engage with the subject on these terms but fundamentally support fox hunting with dogs as a sport regardless of the terms or details he seems to be nitpicking at, as he said in this interview.
Ciara Doherty, being a barrister, should have challenged him his claim that it stopped farmers form shooting Foxes. He lied and said it was based on “legal advice”. Firearms or guns are not mentioned in the bill, Coppenger has publicly stated this numerous times, including on radio interviews and during the debate. To paraphrase her “if shooting foxes was banned in the bill, the bill would say shooting foxes was banned, it does not.” The shooting of animals for pest control are handled in other legislation and by the Gardai. No mention was put in the bill because none was needed.
In the interview:
> Micheal Healy Rae: “The people who are engaged in that type of rural pursuit, they do so under strict animal welfare guidelines. They ensure the fact that it is done in a humane way. And there are checks and balances in place now which weren’t there in the past.”
**”they do so under strict animal welfare guidelines”** – utter lies. There no licensing, enforcement, or even laws like that. They can dig a fox out of its hole and throw it to a pack of dogs to rip apart.
**”They ensure the fact that it is done in a humane way”** – more lies and bullshit. The draw out the hunt and the killing for as long as they can. Humane is shooting a fox, not chasing it for a long time, digging it out and then ripping it apart.
**”And there are checks and balances in place now which weren’t there in the past.”** – More lies. No such check and balances exist on paper or in real life. No new laws or policies or enforcement has been introduced on this in the last 30 years.
How this man is a government minister, put there by FFG, is all you need to know about those “two” parties priorities. They’re shameless.
The bill was written by an incompetent person and was so badly worded that it couldn’t pass.
Edited to change ‘government’ to ‘person’. I stand corrected.
I’d say this is one of the reasons:
“I want to deal very quickly with some of the issues relating to foxes and farming. As I said, they keep down the number of rodents, which is important for arable farming. Rabbits can cost arable farmers a lot of money. The fox is portrayed as a threat to sheep and livestock. The biggest threats to lambs are weather, starvation and disease. They are the leading causes of lamb mortality. Only 1% of lambs are estimated to be lost to foxes. In areas of hill farming the figure may be slightly higher. Let us have grants to help hill farmers deal with that. Good husbandry and fencing are the way around this. We keep hearing that we need to keep down fox numbers. If a cull is needed, it is up to the Department of agriculture to organise that; it will not be a wild west situation of leaving it to individual fox hunts.”
Basically removing the capability for farmers to control foxes on their land.
If you look at the whole debate it’s very clear that it’s not clear enough what the bill is banning and what it isn’t. It’s badly framed.
That should be addressed by agreeing to word it better rather than arguing with each other in a “does”, “does not” back and forth. It would be interesting to see what would happen if it specifically restricted it to a ban on hunting with dogs.
>The Act of 2013 is amended, in section 12, by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (9): “(10) A person shall not— (a) hunt a fox, or foxes, ***including*** with a canine or canines, (b) use a canine or canines to flush or dig out a fox, or foxes, from below ground, (c) trap or snare a fox, or foxes, in order to kill the fox, or foxes, (d) engage in trail hunting.”
It literally says “A person shall not— (a) hunt a fox, or foxes, ***including*** with a canine or canines,”
A farmer with a gun shooting a fox would be hunting, regardless of the reason. Likewise, a farmer asking a hunter to get rid of foxes in their land would be illegal, which is what generally happens.
“I also wish to reference the legislation itself. The Bill, as it is formed and worded, proposes to ban all hunting for foxes, regardless of the purpose and manner in which that hunting is carried out. It also proposes a ban on trail hunting. Deputy Roderic O’Gorman made the point that he accepts farmers need to shoot foxes on occasion as a control mechanism but, under this Bill, that activity would be illegal into the future.” – Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Deputy Martin Heydon) https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2025-12-17/8
I don’t think many people would be opposed to banning hunts on horses with dogs. But the bill was very poorly worded
I’m against fox hunting and hate the jumped up west brits riding around in red jackets, but this bill was stupid, it proposed banning the killing of foxes outright, nonsense if you’re from a farming background, you cant shoo or coax a fox away from newborn lambs. It is the hunting for sport aspect that shoulda been banned
I hope they’re enjoying the lobby money, maybe they could buy a nice colourful dildo to shove up all their arses
I believe this was done deliberately to make it impossible to pass the vote. Just virtue signalling that government is trying, but the rich puppet masters want to keep their deranged hobby.
I would say it’s more down to the fact that the bill is very poorly written and is not clear enough. Foxes are good for pest control. They can also be a big nuisance for farmers where they can kill all chickens etc. I’m sure farmers want to keep the ability to control this as if the fox population got out of control then it might impact on farmers quite a bit.
They need to re-write that bill and be more concise and granular.
The horsy set has a lot of money.
That’s literally it.
Will the ban continue when, inevitably, foxes in Ireland are made extinct?
Because landowners.
As often happens with legislation like this is because of who’s writing and proposing it it it ends up massively overreaching and falls apart. The bill as written would have banned virtually all forms of hunting foxes, including things like using a single hound/working dog to flush them out for the purposes of shooting them, and even trapping them with the intent to kill them afterwards. as well as bans on trail hunting.
It was a massive legislative overstep that was clearly less interested in banning the specific practise of fox hunting and far more concerned with banning the control of foxes as a pest animal virtually full stop, leaving only Lamping and I guess potentially poisoned baits (which I assume are mostly banned by other aspects of wildlife law in Ireland) as the only remaining legal methods of population/pest control.
Its was always going to fall apart as the only explanation for such a massive overreach is that it was written by people that would never go anywhere that would require the wearing of wellies and think foxes are adorable creatures they occasionally watch play in their gardens and not the highly effective, surplus killing predators with no natural population controls that they are. That or it was a very cynical move by animal rights groups to use the emotional image of fox hunting and the prospect of having to vote in favour of it to try and essentially blackmail the legislature to vote for wider extremely radical laws around foxes. The second anybody with any links to rural voters and communities read the details they would have laughed and immediately put themselves in the no column
Basically people like killing things
I see more foxes mashed into the ground on the m50 on a daily basis can we do something about that aswell
Money
The purpose of this bill was NEVER to ban fox hunting.
It could have been, and it would have passed.
It was entirely for the PBP types to campaign and get Instagram followers – instead of actually banning fox hunting.
Which makes them, in my book, kind of evil.
A blanket ban was never going to work. The concerns of farmers couldn’t be ignored.
It’s only an issue for a handful of bleeding heart libs.
31 comments
Alienating rural votes. Nothing else.
It’s lobbying right?
That’s a fantastic photo, foxes are class. People need to shoot foxes to protect their farms but people hunt them for sport sure aren’t class.
Humans are cruel. We’ve been slaughtering each other and animals since the beginning of time and will continue to do so till the end of time unfortunately.Â
Im suprised anyone at all is in favour of not banning it
I would personally phrase this as: *Why are the government pro-fox hunting?*
Being opposed to banning something is simply supporting it.
Read the bill first. I’m against fox hunting, it’s barbaric, but the bill put forward would ban fox hunting in it’s entirety, including farmers protecting their animals. There’s a difference between hopping on a horse with a shotgun and a bloodhound, and shooting a fox because it ate your chickens. This bill ignored that.
Why are the government and Sinn Fein opposed to fox hunting. Sinn Fein should not be left off the hook on this.
They worded it too strongly. Prime student union politics and I never use that phrase.
Basically everybody wants the cruel sport of fox hunting to be banned. That doesn’t mean you have to ban ethical culling as well. It’s performative and was written to never pass in the first place. It’s to drum up outrage. They never even intended for it to pass and that’s the harsh truth.
Because rich cunts hunt foxes, and the government like to be friendly to rich cunts.
In all honesty, the Bill overstepped. I would personally prefer people leave them alone, but the bill should have specifically targeted the hunts first, and tried to make a future ammendment.
Micheal Healy Rae, like is brother, is full of shit. The amount of lies and misinformation they both have told just on this subject is astounding for a national politician and a minister. Danny claimed that 18 of his son lambs were killed by foxes in one day…. absolute nonsense. Micheal claiming that Fox hunting with dogs reduces the spread of disease. They both engage with the subject on these terms but fundamentally support fox hunting with dogs as a sport regardless of the terms or details he seems to be nitpicking at, as he said in this interview.
Ciara Doherty, being a barrister, should have challenged him his claim that it stopped farmers form shooting Foxes. He lied and said it was based on “legal advice”. Firearms or guns are not mentioned in the bill, Coppenger has publicly stated this numerous times, including on radio interviews and during the debate. To paraphrase her “if shooting foxes was banned in the bill, the bill would say shooting foxes was banned, it does not.” The shooting of animals for pest control are handled in other legislation and by the Gardai. No mention was put in the bill because none was needed.
In the interview:
> Micheal Healy Rae: “The people who are engaged in that type of rural pursuit, they do so under strict animal welfare guidelines. They ensure the fact that it is done in a humane way. And there are checks and balances in place now which weren’t there in the past.”
**”they do so under strict animal welfare guidelines”** – utter lies. There no licensing, enforcement, or even laws like that. They can dig a fox out of its hole and throw it to a pack of dogs to rip apart.
**”They ensure the fact that it is done in a humane way”** – more lies and bullshit. The draw out the hunt and the killing for as long as they can. Humane is shooting a fox, not chasing it for a long time, digging it out and then ripping it apart.
**”And there are checks and balances in place now which weren’t there in the past.”** – More lies. No such check and balances exist on paper or in real life. No new laws or policies or enforcement has been introduced on this in the last 30 years.
How this man is a government minister, put there by FFG, is all you need to know about those “two” parties priorities. They’re shameless.
The bill was written by an incompetent person and was so badly worded that it couldn’t pass.
Edited to change ‘government’ to ‘person’. I stand corrected.
I’d say this is one of the reasons:
“I want to deal very quickly with some of the issues relating to foxes and farming. As I said, they keep down the number of rodents, which is important for arable farming. Rabbits can cost arable farmers a lot of money. The fox is portrayed as a threat to sheep and livestock. The biggest threats to lambs are weather, starvation and disease. They are the leading causes of lamb mortality. Only 1% of lambs are estimated to be lost to foxes. In areas of hill farming the figure may be slightly higher. Let us have grants to help hill farmers deal with that. Good husbandry and fencing are the way around this. We keep hearing that we need to keep down fox numbers. If a cull is needed, it is up to the Department of agriculture to organise that; it will not be a wild west situation of leaving it to individual fox hunts.”
Basically removing the capability for farmers to control foxes on their land.
If you look at the whole debate it’s very clear that it’s not clear enough what the bill is banning and what it isn’t. It’s badly framed.
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2025-12-17/9/
That should be addressed by agreeing to word it better rather than arguing with each other in a “does”, “does not” back and forth. It would be interesting to see what would happen if it specifically restricted it to a ban on hunting with dogs.
Cos they are a shower of cnuts
This is the bill:
https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/30/eng/initiated/b3025d.pdf
>The Act of 2013 is amended, in section 12, by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (9): “(10) A person shall not— (a) hunt a fox, or foxes, ***including*** with a canine or canines, (b) use a canine or canines to flush or dig out a fox, or foxes, from below ground, (c) trap or snare a fox, or foxes, in order to kill the fox, or foxes, (d) engage in trail hunting.”
It literally says “A person shall not— (a) hunt a fox, or foxes, ***including*** with a canine or canines,”
A farmer with a gun shooting a fox would be hunting, regardless of the reason. Likewise, a farmer asking a hunter to get rid of foxes in their land would be illegal, which is what generally happens.
“I also wish to reference the legislation itself. The Bill, as it is formed and worded, proposes to ban all hunting for foxes, regardless of the purpose and manner in which that hunting is carried out. It also proposes a ban on trail hunting. Deputy Roderic O’Gorman made the point that he accepts farmers need to shoot foxes on occasion as a control mechanism but, under this Bill, that activity would be illegal into the future.” – Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Deputy Martin Heydon)
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2025-12-17/8
I don’t think many people would be opposed to banning hunts on horses with dogs. But the bill was very poorly worded
I’m against fox hunting and hate the jumped up west brits riding around in red jackets, but this bill was stupid, it proposed banning the killing of foxes outright, nonsense if you’re from a farming background, you cant shoo or coax a fox away from newborn lambs. It is the hunting for sport aspect that shoulda been banned
I hope they’re enjoying the lobby money, maybe they could buy a nice colourful dildo to shove up all their arses
I believe this was done deliberately to make it impossible to pass the vote. Just virtue signalling that government is trying, but the rich puppet masters want to keep their deranged hobby.
I would say it’s more down to the fact that the bill is very poorly written and is not clear enough. Foxes are good for pest control. They can also be a big nuisance for farmers where they can kill all chickens etc. I’m sure farmers want to keep the ability to control this as if the fox population got out of control then it might impact on farmers quite a bit.
They need to re-write that bill and be more concise and granular.
The horsy set has a lot of money.
That’s literally it.
Will the ban continue when, inevitably, foxes in Ireland are made extinct?
Because landowners.
As often happens with legislation like this is because of who’s writing and proposing it it it ends up massively overreaching and falls apart. The bill as written would have banned virtually all forms of hunting foxes, including things like using a single hound/working dog to flush them out for the purposes of shooting them, and even trapping them with the intent to kill them afterwards. as well as bans on trail hunting.
It was a massive legislative overstep that was clearly less interested in banning the specific practise of fox hunting and far more concerned with banning the control of foxes as a pest animal virtually full stop, leaving only Lamping and I guess potentially poisoned baits (which I assume are mostly banned by other aspects of wildlife law in Ireland) as the only remaining legal methods of population/pest control.
Its was always going to fall apart as the only explanation for such a massive overreach is that it was written by people that would never go anywhere that would require the wearing of wellies and think foxes are adorable creatures they occasionally watch play in their gardens and not the highly effective, surplus killing predators with no natural population controls that they are. That or it was a very cynical move by animal rights groups to use the emotional image of fox hunting and the prospect of having to vote in favour of it to try and essentially blackmail the legislature to vote for wider extremely radical laws around foxes. The second anybody with any links to rural voters and communities read the details they would have laughed and immediately put themselves in the no column
Basically people like killing things
I see more foxes mashed into the ground on the m50 on a daily basis can we do something about that aswell
Money
The purpose of this bill was NEVER to ban fox hunting.
It could have been, and it would have passed.
It was entirely for the PBP types to campaign and get Instagram followers – instead of actually banning fox hunting.
Which makes them, in my book, kind of evil.
A blanket ban was never going to work. The concerns of farmers couldn’t be ignored.
It’s only an issue for a handful of bleeding heart libs.
Comments are closed.